Climate Change: The Next Generation: Power hungry Carly Fiorina, embarrassment to all businesswomen, kowtows to craven Sen. Inhofe, who is bought and paid for by Koch Industries, known funder of the Climate Denial Machine

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Power hungry Carly Fiorina, embarrassment to all businesswomen, kowtows to craven Sen. Inhofe, who is bought and paid for by Koch Industries, known funder of the Climate Denial Machine

Inhofe: Fiorina ‘is supporting’ my push to gut the Clean Air Act, agrees climate change is a ‘hoax’

by Lee Fang, Think Progress, June 9, 2010

ThinkProgress spoke to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) about Senate GOP nominee Carly Fiorina. I repost the amazing story and video below.

Today on Capitol Hill, Americans for Prosperity, the corporate front group founded and funded by David Koch of the oil conglomerate Koch Industries, hosted an event to urge the passage of Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) resolution to gut the Clean Air Act’s power to regulate carbon emissions. Several Republican Senators came to the AFP event to encourage support for the resolution, which was drafted by lobbyists from the coal and oil industry.

After the event, ThinkProgress spoke to one of the speakers, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), about his support for Carly Fiorina (R-CA), the U.S. Senate candidate to emerge from the primary last night. Inhofe gave Fiorina an early endorsement, and his nephew, Fred Davis, created the infamous “demon sheep” ads for Fiorina’s campaign.

Inhofe, who has been described as Washington’s “the last flat-earther” for his strident denial of climate change, said Fiorina “is supporting what I am supporting.” He elaborated that Fiorina both supports eviscerating the EPA’s ability to enforce the Clean Air Act, and that she is supportive of his beliefs “in terms of the whole global warming hoax.” He then added that he is “very proud of her”:

TP: I was wondering if Carly actually supports this effort to change the regulatory power of the Clean Air Act that you’re talking about today?
INHOFE: No, Carly’s already taken a stand on this.
TP: Oh, so she’s supporting this?
INHOFE: She is supporting what I am supporting. In fact Carly made a statement yesterday that was the strongest statement I’ve heard yet in terms of the whole global warming hoax. So I was very proud of her.

Watch it:

Not long ago, Fiorina believed in climate change and supported efforts to deal with carbon pollution. On Fox News last year, Fiorina praised Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) for crafting bipartisan clean energy legislation to achieve “energy independence” and “addressing climate change as equally important goals.” Fiorina also campaigned for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008 because he promised to “create a cap-and-trade system that will encourage the development of alternative energy sources.”

Fiorina has quickly dismissed her once-held climate change beliefs to satisfy the far right, science-denying wing of the conservative movement. She initially flipped, telling reporters that people need the “courage” to question climate change science. Then, she ran an ad mocking Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) belief in climate change, with the narrator claiming that the world’s catastrophic changes in temperature are simply due to the “weather.” But now with Inhofe claiming Fiorina agrees fully with his belief that climate change is a “hoax” and that Congress must radically weaken the Clean Air Act, the metamorphosis of Fiorina into full right-wing sycophant is complete.

Update: Last night, Inhofe posted an interview in which he said the problem with the response to BP’s oil spill is “all these hearings we’re having.” Does Fiorina support that view, as well?