It is election season, and I choose to join the fray to campaign against a senator who is not even from my state. But he is a senator whose votes and positions deeply affect me and everyone else in the United States.
Meet Jim Inhofe, the senior senator from Oklahoma, first elected in 1994. Sen. Inhofe is a U.S. Army veteran and has served on the Armed Services Committee. He has been a U.S. Congressman, state senator, and mayor of Tulsa in his 20-plus years of public service. He is a family man with four children and 12 grandchildren, and has been married to the same woman for more than 46 years.
So why is Jim Inhofe “America?s Worst Senator?” One thing. He is possibly the single largest obstacle to fighting the greatest danger our planet has ever known, global warming.
Inhofe?s voting record has never included much support for the environment, earning him, on six occasions, a grade of zero from the League of Conservation Voters, a group that monitors the environmental voting records of members of Congress.
According to political magazine The Nation, Inhofe called global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and labeled the Environmental Protection Agency “a Gestapo bureaucracy.”
In 1998, according to the publication, Inhofe told energy lobbyists he would craft anti-environmental legislation with them.
To say Inhofe doesn?t get it on global warming would be an understatement, given that he doesn?t believe it exists.
You don?t have to watch Al Gore?s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” to know the facts: The earth?s temperature has risen dramatically over the past 30 years, just as carbon emissions have increased dramatically.
The temperature of the ocean?s floor has risen several degrees, and the once-unthinkable ? glaciers melting and breaking apart ? is happening now in Antarctica, Greenland and the North Pole.
The major reason for these events, according to most scientists who study the issue, is carbon gas emissions. They seal in the heat the earth produces and receives from the sun. Since the U.S. emits 25 percent of the world?s carbon emissions, it is a big part of the problem.
But Inhofe and a few others say the evidence does not prove global warming. Hogwash. Thirty years ago, there were snows on Mount Kilimanjaro, yet there are almost none today. This progression isn?t supposed to happen so fast naturally. But it has because of global warming.
Global warming must not be an issue that divides Democrats and Republicans. It cannot be denied, only confronted.
Many politicians in Maryland have made protecting the earth a top priority. Gov. Ehrlich and Mayor O?Malley have both fought to stop pollution of Maryland?s treasure, the Chesapeake Bay, and to reduce air pollution from other states.
But the people of Maryland need to do more. We need to lobby Congress to pass the Kyoto Accords ? the goal of which is to dramatically cut carbon emissions throughout the world. We must also enact much tougher emissions standard for factories and cars in Maryland. In doing so we will stand with other cities and states that already abide the terms of the Accords.
We can lead by example. We can send Congress a message.
For it is people such as Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma who will eventually have to confront the masses of people who want to do the right thing and address global warming now, rather than wait till it is too late.
Tom Moore hosts the AES Tom Moore Show Saturdays (10 to 11 p.m.) on AM 680 WCBM. For more information, visit his Web site at www.tommooreradio.com, or the Web site www.climatecrisis.net
