Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics, and solutions

Right after the House passed the climate and clean energy bill, uber-denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL) told Tulsa World that, from a Senate perspective, “It’s dead in the water.”

In a CleanSkies op-ed Monday titled, “Sen. Inhofe: GOP Beware: Though Now Stalled, Cap-and-Trade is Alive and Well,” admits, the climate bill “is very much alive.”  But  what is most amazing about this op-ed is the unintentionally revealing explanation Inhofe offers for the revival of the bill’s chances:

… their [Democrat's] allies outside the Beltway are preparing a massive $20 million campaign to push legislation forward.

This effort should serve as a wake-up call to anyone who believes cap-and-trade is dead and buried—it is very much alive.

Inhofe uses the term “outside the Beltway” as if that’s a bad thing.  Only to a guy like Inhofe, who kowtows to DC’s Big Oil lobbyists, are people “outside the Beltway” some sort of foreign entity whose actions are to be criticized and attacked.

Yes, despite the massive disinformation campaign from Inhofe’s polluter buddies, grassroots organizations and the American public want action on the climate and clean energy bill, as every major recent poll shows:

• Swing state poll finds 60% “would be more likely to vote for their senator if he or she supported the bill” and Independents support the bill 2-to-1
• Yet another major poll finds “broad support” for clean energy and climate bill: “Support for the plan among independents has increased slightly
• Mark Mellman must read on climate messaging: “A strong public consensus has emerged on the reality and severity of global warming, as well as on the need for federal action” — ecoAmerica “could hardly be more wrong”
• Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 2: Opposing clean energy hurts GOP — Mellman
• Zogby: 71% of likely voters support House climate bill

What has caused Inhofe to flip flop, to feel he needs to go on the attack for legislation he claimed was headed to the morgue?

Green groups are repackaging cap-and-trade as “clean energy legislation.”

No, not  repackaging — this was always pushed as a climate and clean energy jobs bill.  And it is not just the “green groups” pushing the key messages (see “Clean Energy Works launches: New grassroots effort unites faith, labor, veterans, environmental, sportsmen, business, youth, farm, and community groups to fight for for clean air, clean water, clean energy job bill“).  But the grassroots have gotten organized — and that  is always scary to someone who is trying to block what the American public wants.

And you can skip the rest of the op-ed.  It is Inhofian disinformation, which I’d call par for the course, except that most of his falsehoods are double bogeys

• Scientist: “Our conclusions were misinterpreted” by Inhofe, CO2 — but not the sun — “is significantly correlated” with temperature since 1850
• Inhofe keeps making stuff up, this time utterly misquoting Revkin on Hansen
• Uber-denier Inhofe misquotes Hadley, gives big wet Valentine’s kiss to Pielke — go figure!

Share

   Print

This entry was posted by Joe on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.