Sen. Inhofe's influence over the EPA snowballs

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Sen. Inhofe's influence over the EPA snowballs

That's the print title. Online, it's "How James Inhofe is upending the nation's energy and environmental policies" The print title is a play on words. Inhofe is the one who brought the snowball onto the Senate floor as proof that manmade climate change was a hoax.

Proquest: http://search.proquest.com/nationalnewsexpanded/docview/1876993250/D9FB7B5B633849BEPQ/1?accountid=xxxxx

Ex-aides in position to reshape agency he's long condemned

Eilperin, Juliet; Dennis, Brady. The Washington Post; Washington, D.C. 15 Mar 2017: A.1.

For more than a decade, Sen. James M. Inhofe has raged against the scientific consensus that humans are fueling climate change, calling it "the greatest hoax" ever perpetrated on Americans. The Oklahoma Republican has blasted the Environmental Protection Agency as an "activist organization" that has unfairly burdened everyone from farmers to fossil-fuel companies. ... Now the man critics once dismissed as a political outlier has an unprecedented opportunity to shape the nation's energy and environmental policies. And he has helped populate the upper ranks of the agency he has derided with several of his closest confidants. ... At least half a dozen former aides to Inhofe - and counting - have been hired into top positions at the EPA and the White House. The chief of staff and deputy chief of staff to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a fellow Oklahoman and longtime friend of Inhofe, spent years working for the senator. Pruitt's senior advisers on air, climate and legal issues are Inhofe alumni. In addition, two former Inhofe aides have become top domestic and international energy and environmental advisers to President Trump.

"It gives me a level of comfort to know that we have a bureaucracy that's actually going to be serving instead of ruling," Inhofe said in an interview this week, describing his former staffers as qualified professionals who will protect the environment. "They are going to be very realistic. They're going to do it in a way that will not be punitive. The previous administration was almost looking for ways to punish people."

Comforting is not how many of Inhofe's longtime opponents would describe the changes. ... "Inhofe was like the original climate-denier in chief. He was one of the first people spouting this gibberish - fact-free but dangerous gibberish," said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. "Now he and his cronies have far more reach and are far more dangerous than they've ever been. ... That's good news for the polluters but horrible news for public health."

Inhofe, 82, has been in the Senate since 1994 and has served as the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for 12 out of the past 14 years. For much of that time, he has been one of the nation's most powerful climate-change skeptics, even writing a book in 2012 attacking the science around global warming, which most of the world has accepted as a serious and urgent threat. ... His most high-profile assault on climate science - one President Barack Obama mocked multiple times - came on a cold day in February 2015, when he stood on the Senate floor, fresh snowball in hand, to suggest that Earth could not be warming in any dangerous way, given the winter weather outside.
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On a snow day, here's how @JimInhofe has shaped Trump's energy/environment policy-thru former aides http://wapo.st/2lXZs1y W @brady_dennis

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He called climate change the "greatest hoax" and brought a snowball to the Senate. He's now shaping @EPA: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/how-james-inhofe-is-upending-the-nations-energy-and-environmental-policies/2017/03/14/2bebdbfa-081c-11e7-a15f-a58d4a988474_story.html?utm_term=.b012b5d15ca9 …

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How James Inhofe is upending the nation’s energy and environmental policies: w/@eilperin

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[Freethinker65]

1. Embarrassing