More On That Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore's book An Inconvenient Truth already won a Quill. Now the movie version is up for a Best Documentary Oscar.

Meanwhile, the U.S., along with China, qualifies for a dubious dinstinction:

Oil-consuming giants the United States and China along with oil-producing behemoth Saudi Arabia rank among the world's worst countries in dealing with climate change, a report said.

Their dependence on fossil fuels coupled with what some see as short-sighted energy policies earned them the dubious distinction of placing at or near the bottom of a survey of 56 industrialized or industrializing nations, it said.

One of the highlights of the seismic Blue Wave in Washington is Barbara Boxer replacing the nutty James Inhofe as the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe is an outspoken global warming skeptic who publicly calls the crisis a hoax. Aided largely by Exxon front groups, he disseminates misleading propaganda about the crisis and about activists like Gore who want to curb it.

Boxer has promised things will change now that she's at the helm and I expect nothing less. We've wasted enough time with Inhofe and his fellow clowns, time that the world really doesn't have to spare.

Meanwhile, opponents are already firing arrows. Now that Boxer announced she will hold hearings on global warming as the first order of business, she's already being painted as "radical" and "out there". Considering the bunch that preceded her, she should wear that badge with pride.

Update:

Senator Inhofe continues to shill for oil companies, even as the clock runs out on his lame duck Committee chairmanship:

The U.S. Senate's most vocal global warming skeptic, James Inhofe, on Thursday dismissed a U.N. meeting on climate change as a "brainwashing" session.

Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who will step down as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee in January, told a news conference, "The idea that the science (on global warming) is settled is altogether wrong."

A majority of scientists, many in the U.S. government, accept that global warming is spurred by human actions and the emission of greenhouse gases.

Of course Bush does the same thing, predictable though lamentable behavior for a corporatist with strong, lingering ties to the oil industry and for the last man still in denial about Iraq.



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