One Perfect Tweet Sums Up Why Climate Denial in Congress Is So Dangerous

Everett Historical/Shutterstock

Here’s the good news: Yesterday the Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of an amendment to the Keystone XL bill that says “climate change is real and not a hoax.” Good work, ladies and gentlemen! Glad we got that on the record, only 25 years after scientists agreed on it.

Here’s the bad news: Turns out the vote was just an excuse for James Inhofe (Okla.) to say, as he has many times before: Sure, climate change is real. The climate changes all the time. But humans aren’t the cause.

His evidence for this dismissal of the mainstream scientific consensus? The bible.

Oy vey.

Now here’s the really bad news: This same gentleman from Oklahoma recently became the chairman of the very Senate committee that oversees environmental policy. And two of his climate change-denying peers will chair other subcommittees that oversee vital climate science.

In case it isn’t self-evident why these facts are so terrible, we have our lovely readers to sum it up:

@MotherJones How can United States possibly compete in the scientific community when we have throwbacks like this running major committees

— Sharon Dennis (@sddphoto) January 22, 2015