WASHINGTON -– Four Republican former administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency had a message for the Senate on Wednesday on climate change: It's real, it's bad and the United States should do something about it.
But their fellow Republicans at the hearing largely ignored that position, instead repeating a variety of arguments about why the U.S. should not address the greenhouse gas emissions causing the planet to warm up.
During the hearing, the subcommittee's Republicans raised a range of challenges to the EPA rules. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) argued that the rules would have "serious economic consequences" while providing "no measurable impact on climate change." He also said he's "frustrated" by the "cartoonish" and "outlandish" claims that proponents of climate action make to dismiss critics of the science. Vitter has previously called evidence cited to support climate change "ridiculous pseudo-science garbage."
Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) criticized "expensive, big-government, left-wing climate policies." Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) accused the EPA of trying to "force Americans to live out the president's green dream."
Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) challenged the idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. "I would say CO2 is a different kettle of fish," said Sessions. "It's plant food. It's not a pollutant in any normal definition."
The Republicans called three witnesses for the hearing: a biologist who argues that climate change is not significantly affected by human activity; the attorney general of Alabama, who has fought other EPA actions in court; and an economist who criticized cap and trade (a policy previously debated in Congress to address climate change, but not, in fact, the policy that the EPA has put in place).
Let's call in the proper ratio of scientists on the topic, which is like 500:1
ReplyDeleteI don't understand at all GOP denial of science.