Bernie Sanders challenges global warming skeptic (Burlington Free Press)

July 31, 2012

By Erin Kelly

Sen. Bernie Sanders took on the Senate’s biggest global-warming skeptic on Monday in a speech aimed at prodding Congress to stop ignoring the issue.

Sanders, I-Vt., called on Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and other conservatives to rethink their views on global warming. Inhofe, the senior Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and its former chairman, is famous for dismissing global warming as “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

“Sen. Inhofe has some very radical views regarding global warming, and I believe he is dead wrong and dangerously wrong on this issue,” Sanders said in a speech from the Senate floor. “Because many Republicans follow Sen. Inhofe’s lead, it means we are making very little progress here in Congress in combating what most of the scientific community sees as a global environmental crisis.”

Sanders, who is up for re-election this year, noted that Inhofe is in line to head the environment committee again if Republicans retake control of the Senate. Sanders serves with Inhofe on the panel, which is led by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

The committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on the latest science supporting the existence of global warming and the role humans play by burning fossil fuels. Congress, bitterly divided along partisan lines, has reached a stalemate on the issue and is not expected to agree on any legislation in this session.

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