The following is a letter published in several local newspapers.
Last week, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) authored an amendment to impending Senate legislation that would result in the approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The Whitehouse rider consisted of a simple statement declaring “the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax." Given the pervasiveness of climate denialism in Congress, the Senate’s vote of 98 to 1 supporting the Whitehouse amendment might be viewed as a surprising triumph of sanity over business as usual. However, I perceive Senator Whitehouse’s “victory” as a dangerous miscalculation.
It is the view of many, myself included, that climate change is the most important issue of our time, and poses a significant threat to humanity and all life on this planet. The science is irrefutable. The impacts of a warming planet become more visible each day, and the failure of policymakers to act immediately will result in a far more intractable problem with dire consequences for our children and future generations. If my words seem unnecessarily alarmist, then I can only urge you to learn as much about current climate science as possible and stop listening to the distortions of billionaire funded think tanks and the staggering ignorance spewing from many media outlets, most notably and egregiously, Fox News.
Demonstrating just how impotent the Senator’s resolution truly was, James Inhofe (R-OK) who is chairman of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee and frequently refers to global warming as a “hoax” shrewdly offered to be a co-sponsor of the amendment. The language used by Whitehouse in his rider is curiously inept as it failed to include the most important fact about our warming planet; rising global temperatures are being driven by human activities (anthropogenic). As Inhofe would be the first to assert, the Earth’s climate has gone through periods of cooling and warming over a span of many millions of years. Inhofe has also said that it is “arrogant” to believe that people “can change climate.” Whitehouse’s failure to state that climate change is caused by human activities in his amendment has merely given climate charlatans like Inhofe cover to maintain policies of inaction while correctly asserting that they are now on the record regarding climate and can reference their informed conviction “that climate change is real and not a hoax.” Of course, Inhofe can still argue without inconsistency that anthropogenic warming is a hoax.
Why did Senator Whitehouse introduce such a poorly conceived resolution? How could he have been so effortlessly outmaneuvered by the Senator of Oklahoma who requires an EpiPen when confronted by all things scientific? Rather than engaging in unflattering speculation, I would like to hear the Senator respond to what appears to me to be a significant political blunder involving an issue with so much at stake if the inaction of our elected officials is allowed to continue.
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