By Kevin Mooney — Without the leadership of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the leading skeptic on the science of man-made global warming in the U.S. Senate, anti-energy legislation may well have become a reality. He is the indispensable in the fight against “cap and trade” schemes aimed against America’s free enterprise system. Below is the full-text of his video address to the U.N. global warming/climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico.
Hello, I’m Jim Inhofe, Republican Senator from Oklahoma and top watchdog of the Obama Administration’s global warming agenda.
I had hoped to join you in Cancun tonight, but we had votes that I could not miss and given that EPA is busy trying to implement cap-and-trade through the backdoor, I felt it was important to keep watch in Washington. You see, the Obama Administration is trying to achieve administratively what it could not legislatively. Cap-and-trade is now as dead as a doornail, as the American people rejected it at the ballot box on November 2. But that hasn’t stopped the Obama EPA. So it’s our mission now to stop EPA and its job-killing agenda.
We have come a long way since the last UN Climate meeting last year when President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Lisa Jackson, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and dozens of lawmakers made their way to Copenhagen to tell the world that cap-and-trade was going to pass the United States Senate. Yet the truth was it had no chance of passing. To deliver that message, I traveled to Copenhagen as a one-man truth squad. I was only on the ground for about 2 hours, perhaps the most enjoyable 2 hours of my life, but the message I delivered was clear; under no circumstances will Global Warming Cap and Trade legislation ever pass the United States Senate. The reporters and diplomats didn’t like it. They hated me for telling the truth. But here we are: I was right and they were wrong.
The fact is, nothing is going to happen in Cancun this year and everyone knows it. I couldn’t be happier and poor Al Gore couldn’t be more upset: it has been widely reported that he is “depressed” about Cancun.
But let me be clear: despite our success over the past year, global warming alarmists will continue to push their agenda. For example, some leaders in Cancun are stepping up their attacks on capitalism and United Nations officials are saying they need to do more to “spread the wealth around.” All of this is more of the same.
Remember it was French President Jacques Chirac, who said in 2000 that Kyoto Protocol was the “first component of an authentic global governance.” And Margot Wallstrom, the European Union’s former Environment Commissioner, who said in 2001 that Kyoto is about “trying to create a level playing field for big businesses throughout the world.”
Let me end by saying how grateful I am to Americans for Prosperity for organizing this event tonight, which is being broadcasted live to over twenty states. In particular, I want to say thank you to my good friend, and head of the Oklahoma chapter of AFP, Stuart Jolly. He has done a terrific job and I understand there is a large party back in Oklahoma tonight as well.
Stuart, it was just two years ago that I joined you and a number of Oklahomans in Washington when I received AFP’s top award at the Defending the American Dream Dinner. That night I said in my remarks, “It is easy to be ‘principled’ and oppose the march of big government during good economic times, but conservatives and other free-market advocates must be especially courageous when times are tough.”
Keep up the good work – and for those of you in Cancun this week, stay strong, take no prisoners, and enjoy the party!
