"The conclusion that humans are causing global warming is bunk," said J.J. Brown, who makes a living giving Hatch bad advice on natural resources issues.
Having established, erroneously, that we have no impact on climate change, Brown addressed energy independence, defined by the Republican Party as raping America's coastlines, wildlife refuges and other sensitive areas with oil rigs. Yes, and giving oil companies carte blanche to tear up public land in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah to extract oil from shale.
Then Brown turned to politics. He told the mining group that there are billions of gallons of environmentally neutral domestic oil to be had if Congress can overcome those darn "anti-human activity, anti-coal, anti-oil" environmentalists, whose policy proposals have been adopted by the Democrats.
Trouble is, Brown is denying the political reality, and defying science and common sense.
The burning of carbon-based fossil fuels like oil and coal is warming and imperiling our planet. Most every scientist not employed by Big Oil or Big Coal or the Bush administration will tell you so, backing it up with hard science in peer-reviewed publications.
In short, it's primarily the Republicans, not the Democrats, who stand squarely in the way of a sound, sustainable national energy policy.
For example, a proposed windfall profits tax that would have forced oil companies to invest a portion of their inflated profits into alternative-energy research was stymied by Republicans. And a vital energy bill that would have extended tax credits to allow the solar and wind industries to achieve the scale necessary to be cost-competitive with fossil fuels was voted down eight times by Republicans.
If we are to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and wean ourselves from foreign oil, Congress needs to focus on mass transit, inter-city rail, improved vehicle mileage standards, clean fuels and the development of renewable energy resources for power production.
Fossil fuels, formed during the days of the dinosaur, are the dinosaurs of our day. That's what the extraction industries need to be told.
