Sen. Jim Inhofe thinks China’s pledges to address climate change are a hoax, the Oklahoma Republican told reporters Wednesday.
Inhofe slammed the non-binding agreement President Obama struck with Chinese President Xi Jinping to curb greenhouse gas emissions, as he noted the pact isn’t legally enforceable and that China’s emissions would be allowed to rise until 2030. He also questioned China’s designs on a national cap-and-trade program. It plans to create a national carbon market in 2016 and is testing pilot programs in seven provinces.
“If I were over in China and the prevailing thought — and that is they want to benefit from other countries sending things over — I think I would fabricate all kinds of commitments and pilot programs and just not live up to them,” Inhofe said.
When asked if Inhofe believed China was “effectively lying,” the senator responded, “Yeah.”
“I’ve talked to these people. And are they effectively lying — the individuals that tell me with smiles on their faces that we’re just waiting for the United States to do something so we can benefit from it?”
Inhofe is the new chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Environmental Protection Agency and the greenhouse gas emissions policies that come with it. He is perhaps Congress’ most outspoken critic of global warming, calling it the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
Under the agreement, China said its emissions, blamed for driving manmade climate change, would grow until around 2030 and then decline. The U.S. had pushed for an earlier date, and experts said the peaking date matched what China had been planning. The U.S., for its part, said it would curb emissions by at least 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
Observers of international climate negotiations said the China-U.S. agreement was historic in that it for the first time showed China was willing to address emissions after years of obstructing talks. Many said getting the two nations, which account for 45 percent of global emissions, on the same page helped to build momentum for the United Nations-hosted talks scheduled for December in Paris.
