The odd couple

Inhofe and Francis tussle over climate change

Senator Jim Inhofe’s decades-long rant against global warming took a red-leathered papal shoe in the ass a few weeks back when Pope Francis issued his encyclical Laudato si’ (Praise Be to You) on care for our common home. In it, the pope called on those who deny climate change to knock it off.

“The Earth, our home,” said the pontiff, “is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”

Them’s fightin’ words, so Inhofe took his manners and junk science to the nearest climate-denying chop shop.

“Everyone is going to ride the pope now. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Snark and really bad imagery is no way to go through life, senator, but let’s continue.  

Francis’s encyclical, while sparing no one, effectively knocked out the legs on which Inhofe’s argument was barely standing. Science abandoned Inhofe years ago, including scientists who used to front for the con. Yet he clings to a peculiar interpretation of the Bible that maintains God’s good earth is immune to man’s actions:  

Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night,’ my point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.  

“God’s still up there”—?

Makes your head hurt, doesn’t it, to think of the Almighty as some white-robed omniscient James Adeylott (Fox23 meteorologist), sitting on a puffy cloud up there, dictating weather patterns. The senator has said global warming is the “greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people,” even though to believe that, you’d have to believe thousands of independent scientists worldwide conspired, along with a fat Al Gore and liberals everywhere, to photoshop pics of Greenland’s disappearing glaciers.

The pope, who evidently is part of that hoax, was having none of it.

They suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbor and with the earth itself. According to the Bible, these three vital relationships have been broken, both outwardly and within us. The rupture is sin.

The pope goes on to talk about our “creaturely limitations.”

This allows us to respond to the charge that Judaeo-Christian thinking, on the basis of the Genesis account which grants man “dominion” over the earth has encouraged the unbridled exploitation of nature by painting him as domineering and destructive by nature. This is not a correct interpretation of the Bible as understood by the Church.

You say “unbridled exploitation,” I say “Drill, baby, drill,” let’s call the whole thing off.

The press coverage of Inhofe—portraying him as Joe Frazier to the pope’s Muhammad Ali—is astonishingly lazy. Climate change is only a punchline to those funded by Searle Freedom Trust, the John Williams Pope Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Inhofe is a front man for this unshakable, arrogant collection of industry hacks, so to anyone facing droughts, erosion and rising sea levels, there’s only one heavyweight in this fight, and he wears a cassock and drives a used Renault. A chemist by trade, the pope has degrees in philosophy and theology. Inhofe has a bachelor’s degree in economics, which, on this issue, the pope trusts as far as he can throw—wait for it—a snowball.  

Some circles maintain that current economics and technology will solve all environmental problems, and argue, in popular and nontechnical terms, that the problem of global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth. Their behavior shows that for them maximizing profits is enough.

Inhofe then brought the disingenuousness.

“I am concerned that his encyclical will be used by global warming alarmists to advocate for policies that will equate to the largest, most regressive tax increase in our nation’s history. It’s the poor that spend the largest portion of their expendable income to heat their homes, and they will be the ones to carry the heaviest burden of such onerous policies.”

Senator Inhofe, champion of the poor!

Il Papa, you were saying.

Climate change … represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day. Many of the poor live in areas particularly affected by phenomena related to warming.”

Clearly, the pope is more worried about the poor’s inability to eat than their ability to pay utility bills.

“I’m not a Catholic,” Inhofe said, but I’ve got a lot of friends who are, who are wondering: Why all of a sudden is he involved in this? I don’t have the answer for that.”

If you’re scoring at home (and, if you’re not, why not?), yes, Jim Inhofe, a Presbyterian, actually said he’s got a lot of Catholic friends who are wondering why the pope is acting like Bill Nye.

And we weep.

Armed with a sheet of talking points for when confronted with climate science, he asked the people to start fighting the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) draft regulations to limit the amount of carbon power plants can produce. James Inhofe then assured them that God was on their side. “If we do it as a team you will be doing the lord’s work, and he will eventually bless you for it. Amen.”

Blessed are the deniers, for they shall inherit the earth.

This, too: Inhofe was re-elected last year—we cannot remind you enough—with nearly 70 percent of the vote.

For more rabble-rousing from Barry, read his thoughts on Sheriff Glanz and the TCSO scandal. To read more about climate change, see Ray Pearcey's story about nuclear power (and a reader's response to Ray in Your Voice).