Republican Climate Denier to Get Top Senate Environment Job

In the wake of the Republican sweep of the 2014 midterms, Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe, one of the United States’ biggest names in climate change denial, is slated to lead the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee.

Inhofe has been denying the science behind climate change for 20 years. In 2012 he published a book calling global warming a hoax, and has compared the Environmental Protection Agency to the Nazi Gestapo.

If as expected he becomes the new committee chair in January, “he will probably try to dismantle the EPA rules cutting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants – the centrepiece of Obama’s environmental agenda,” The Guardian reports.

There is reason to believe those rules might be safe, however. Industry lobbyists and campaigners said Inhofe would lack the votes needed to throw them out entirely, and President Obama would also veto such a move.

The newspaper continued:

From his perch in the Senate, Inhofe is expected to launch multiple investigations into the EPA – including Republican charges that the agency leaned heavily on a campaign group in drafting the proposed new rules.

But as committee chair, Inhofe is unlikely to indulge in quite the same level of theatrics on climate denial, said RL Miller, a California lawyer and founder of the grassroots organising group, Climate Hawks Vote.

“I expect we are going to see less headline-grabbing efforts on the EPA and more of simply throttling their budget,” Miller said. “If he touches climate denial at all he is going to be ridiculed in public and in the media. If he is smart, he is going to be very quiet publicly, and it will be death by a thousand cuts in the kind of budget battles that people like Jon Stewart don’t pay attention to.”