Warming Up Over Global Warming

(AP)

And if you have lingering doubts that the two parties reside in parallel universes when it comes to this topic, check out the dialogue of the deaf during Tuesday's meeting of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Or if you're scoring this from home, it's the blinkered obstructionists against the Chicken Littles of the world. So it was that the administration trotted out Dept. of Energy chief Steven Chu and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, among others, to testify on behalf of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. The bill is intended to put in place regulations that would cut CO2 emissions 20% by 2050 and 83% by 2050 while also spending heavily on new (and more energy-efficient) technologies. A House of Representatives earlier this year passed a similar piece of legislation.)

The proposed legislation would require companies to reduce their emissions or otherwise pay to cut their emissions elsewhere. Conservative critics, who hate the idea of government mandating a market-based cap and trade system - they say would be an additional tax on companies and consumers - weren't buying it. (Lamar Alexander called it "the largest corporate welfare program in history.") That was the cue for the ranking Republican on the committee, James Inhofe (R-OK) to return to his favorite `global warming is baloney' routine.

Maybe he was set off by John Kerry (D-MA.), a co-sponsor of the bill with Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.), gave a long-winded recitation of the legislation's benefits. Kerry declared that the scientific evidence about global warming was more definitive and troubling than ever and that "a voluntary approach won't get the job done." That got Inhofe's dander up who proceded to invoke the spirit of his ideological kith and kin from the tea party movement.

"How quickly we forget here in these hallowed halls, the insulation of the United States Senate. It's only 60 days ago we came back from our August recess and we've forgotten all about the outrage that is out there...those people, many of them, have been denigrated for not really expressing a sincere concern..but it's there."

Then, dismissing cap and trade as "a temple of doom," Inhofe challenged the assertion that the science regarding global warming was beyond contestation.

"You keep saying that because you want to believe it so much," he said, adding that he has "a list" of scientists who are solidly on his side. "The science is not settled. Everyone knows that it's not settled."

This was vintage Inhofe. (As was this testy exchange he recently had with Al Gore on the same topic. Gore tried unsuccessfully to cite a 2007 estimate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the the rise in average global temperature by the end of this century would be more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit - assuming a continuing reliance on high growth, fossil fuel intensive energy.)

Inhofe's a lost cause but the Democrats' best hope for peeling away some Republicans might be the prospect of more jobs. During his time at the microphone, Chu sounded that theme, arguing that the United States needs to make investments that produce "sustainable jobs." To drive home the point, Chu added a not-so-subtle warning: while the U.S. debates whether or not to invest in clean technologies, China and other countries have already decided to press ahead. After all, it is the 21st century. Of course, if Democratic climate change proposals really will cost the economy $400 billion more a year, that doesn't sound like a great way to keep jobs in the U.S.

In the meantime, expect more sound and fury.