Celebrate Flat Earth Day With James Inhofe!

onApr 22, 2008 @ 18:44 PDT

It wouldn’t be Earth Day without a diatribe from the US Senate’s anti-science curmudgeon, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). He didn’t disappoint. The Senate Minority Environment and Public Works committee website shouts at us in large red font, (”IN CASE YOU MISSED IT”), and gives us the text of his editorial in today’s Washington Times.

He writes about “America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 ” (a.k.a. the Lieberman-Warner bill). He claims , among many other things, that he opposes the bill because it would “be devastating to the economy” and “impose severe economic constraints on American families and American workers”, and that his main concern is “carbon regulation”, i.e., the big bad government versus the financially strapped energy companies (that last part was sarcasm, by the way).

And then he really gets into it with – you guessed it – the Great Climate Science Plot Against The Energy Companies.

He’s very concerned, you see:

More troubling yet is that man-made climate fears are being used to expand the sizes and scope of the federal government in other new and inventive ways. In addition to the proposed Lieberman-Warner bill, we have watched over the past year as liberal special interests have employed hundreds of lawyers to try and convert current environmental laws such as the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Clean Air Act into climate laws. Their attempt to list the polar bear as a threatened species is not about protecting the bear but about using the ESA to achieve global warming policy that they cannot otherwise achieve through the legislative process. The implications of such a policy would lead to drastic increases in litigation and employ teams of lawyers ready to find ways to shut down energy production.

We’ve discussed in detail the pros and cons of the bill, as have other energy and climate bloggers , and we’ll continue to discuss it as time goes on. But our opposition has nothing to do with capitalism, which is Inhofe’s primary concern (he cites numbers from a study done by an Exxon front group, in fact).

As usual, Inhofe is concerned about his oil and coal company friends.

Our concerns are based on how effective the bill will be in the fight to stop climate change.

We’re worried about the future of the planet, which is what Earth Day is all about… and what should be on everyone’s mind, every day.