Inhofe’s plan: Stall climate action until the next president 1

The Heartland Institute, an outpost for climate change skeptics, is holding its Third International Conference on Climate Change here in Washington, D.C., this week (just three months after its second one). Yesterday the meeting played host to the Senate’s top climate-change denier, Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe.

Inhofe, best known for calling global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” regaled the crowd with his plans to obstruct climate and energy legislation in Congress this year. His pledge? That Republican deniers will “stall that until we get a new president.”

An excerpt, followed by video:

Don’t be distressed when you see the House passes some kind of a cap-and-trade bill. It could be worse and [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] could still pass it, so it’ll pass there. The EPA has threatened to regulate this through the Clean Air Act. That isn’t going to work in my opinion because we can stall that until we get a new president—that shouldn’t be a problem. ... But while the House will pass a bill ... in the Senate, they’re not going to be able to pass it.

• Comments