Proto-Fascist Website Newsbusters Continue Factless Smear of EPA
In a hard-hitting* interview with Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Newsbusters' Noel Sheppard opened by asking:
Lisa Jackson Source: EPA
Well, I'm sure you saw EPA chief Lisa Jackson was named Energy Policy Maker of the Year by Politico last night. And I quote, "The EPA chief has been a forceful advocate on environmental issues and has held the line against intense Republican attacks on her agency." Is this kind of like Time picking Hitler or Khomeini as Man of the Year - whoever had the most impact whether for good or ill?
Later, Sheppard alleged that Jackson is "trying to set policy without oversight by the legislature" based on the "anthropogenic global warming myth."
In fact, it was the Supreme Court that ruled that the EPA is required to regulate greenhouse gases under the bipartisan Clean Air Act unless it "it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change" or "provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do." Following extensive review of peer-reviewed scientific literature, which overwhelmingly concludes that global warming is caused by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases, the EPA found that greenhouse gases classify as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.
Newsbusters' questions fit into a conservative media narrative that demonizes Lisa Jackson and grossly mischaracterizes EPA's actions to address climate change.
*From the interview:
NEWSBUSTERS: If Margaritas were the official drink in Cancun, what would you and I be drinking if we were in Durban right now?
INHOFE: Well, I don't know what they're serving in Durban, but I'm not going so I don't have to worry about it.
NEWSBUSTERS: Great. Anything else you want to tell our readers before I let you go, Senator?
INHOFE: No, I don't think so. I'm just glad, so thankful, Noel, that you and a handful of other people are keeping this alive, because as I say, this would be the most devastating economic blow in this country, and they're trying to do it. They're not going to give up. And even if Obama is long gone, there are going to be people trying to do this. So it's a very important issue we've got to keep alive, and you're the kind of guy that is willing to do that, and I appreciate it.
NEWSBUSTERS: Well, you know we've been fighting with you right from the start, and we'll continue the fight.
INHOFE: I know that. We're both doing the Lord's work, Noel.
NEWSBUSTERS: Yes sir. Well, Senator, thank you for your time, and I'm going to say Merry Christmas with an underline.
A bit of surreal theater - a proto-Fascist website interviews one of, if not the most scientifically illiterate members of the Senate to get his gut feelings about issues of which he has shown no rational knowledge. Inhofe has confused his fantasies with rational knowledge so many times, if he was just an ordinary person indeed of a right-wing senator, he'd probably be committed to a home for the pathetically mentally deficient.
Study finds climate changes faster than species can adapt. Science and progress marches on as Newsbusters and Inhofe try to take the world back to the good old news where people believed flies spontaneously appeared out of dirty piles of rags.
