VIDEO: Chair Of Senate Environment Committee Says Only God Can Change Climate
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- A video of the chair the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee has gone viral because of his statements linking climate change and God.
"Climate is changing, and climate has always changed and always will," Senator James Mountain Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) said after asking for "silence" on the Senate floor. "There's archeological evidence of that. There's biblical evidence of that. There's historic evidence of that."
The Senator continued, "The hoax is that there are some people who are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful, they can change climate. Man can't change climate."
There has been a flurry of votes on climate change in the Senate recently, culminating in Thursday's passage of a bill to force the approval of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.
That measure was approved 62-to-36, and now goes before the House. President Obama has vowed to veto any such legislation.
A few days before Inhofe's statement, the Senate voted 98-to-1 in favor of a bill declaring climate change is real and not a hoax. The only dissenting vote came from Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi.
Wicker chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and has long stated there is no firm evidence of global warming.
The same day, two other related bills went down in defeat. One attributed climate change to human activity; the other linked human activity to climate change but said the Keystone XL Pipeline would have no significant environmental impacts.
Many political analysts believe the fight over the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline has become a "proxy symbol" for broader debates over climate change.
