Still melting, no matter what Jim Inhofe says.
Tim McDonnell at
Mother Jones provides some details on the Senate's fresh recruits from the deniersphere.
First and foremost, there's Sen. Jim Inhofe, the "star" of this cabal, not a newcomer but rather the Senate's denier-in-chief based on the fact he's the only one who has gone so far as to write a book claiming global warming is not just a hoax but a plot. He's likely to replace Sen. Barbara Boxer as chair of the Committee on Environment and Public Works in two months.
Three of the newbies McDonnell points to:
Tom Cotton (R-Ark.): Cotton has seized on a common but misleading notion among climate change deniers: "The simple fact is that for the last 16 years the earth's temperature has not warmed." He admits, however, that "it's most likely that human activity has contributed to some of" the temperature increase of the last hundred years. Still, he supports building new coal plants and the Keystone XL pipeline.
Steve Daines (R-Mont.): Daines is a harsh critic of Obama's energy and climate policies, which he said "threaten nearly 5,000 Montana jobs and would cause Montana's electricity prices to skyrocket." While in the House, he signed a pledge that he will "oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue." He believes global warming, to the extent that it exists, is probably caused by solar cycles.
Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.): In a debate last month, Capito said, "I don't necessarily think the climate's changing, no." Then she clarified that her opinion might change with the weather: "Yes it's changing, it changes all the time, we heard it raining out there," she said. "I'm sure humans are contributing to it." I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Capito is also a founding member of the Congressional Coal Caucus.
It's always tempting to call deniers ignorant or know-nothings. And some no doubt are dumb on science. But for many of them, keeping their fossil-fuel industry buddies happy is the main reason for their stance on global warming. Some of
those guys surely recognize the idiocy of denying climate science, but they do it anyway for the campaign cash, for the possibility of positions they'll be offered when they leave their elected jobs or because they are out to block anything environmentalists or the left proposes. Emissions controls? Commie meddling. Wind turbines? A blight on scenic views. The spread of solar rooftops? A financial affront to private utiilities.
What the outcome in the Senate races means is that the only place good climate policy is going to emerge or be copied in the next two years is at the municipal and state level. But that was going to be the case regardless of what transpired Tuesday given the obstacles the current Senate and House place against making any such policies national.
For environmental progressives, what this means—besides relentlessly exposing the myopia and malignancy of the deniersphere and its delayer enablers—is building more workarounds in cities, states and regions. In other words, it means doing more of what's already been happening until 2017.