SHOW DOWN AT THE GREEN-IS-OK CORAL: GINGRICH & KERRY vs INHOFE

You may not like-- or even detest-- Newt Gingrich, but he certainly isn't as stupid and backward as that loony senator from Oklahoma... not Coburn, the other kook: James Inhofe. He once was. Just two years ago Gingrich was a doctrinaire denier of global warming. During last night's rather genteel debate on climate change, he agreed with John Kerry that the ship has long ago left the dock-- and that Senator Inhofe was let behind, six feet under the rising tide. The debate was what to do about it. Unlike Inhofe and the diminishing band of reactionary flat-earth Republicans that Gingrich usually agrees with, he and Senator Kerry agree with the consensus of scientists-- real ones, not the ones who are paid to pretend they agree with corporate and Bush Regime ideological doctrine so as to muddy the waters-- that climate change is being enhanced, perhaps catastrophically, through the activities of man. He went so far as to praise the new book written by Kerry and his wife, This Moment on Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future.

Gingrich has his own book on the environment coming out in time for his presidential race next year. He argued the right-wing position on the environment, that the way to solve the problem is to give more tax breaks to corporations. In fact the Brookings and Rand sponsored debate turned into an argument about whether the problem would be solved by progressive, collective social action or by leaving it up to Big Business to come up with solutions based on company bottom lines. Senator Kerry pointed out, correctly, that no environmental crisis has ever been solved voluntarily, without government intervention. "That's like saying, 'Barry Bonds, go investigate steroids,' or letting Enron take control of pensions." Gingrich, reciting right wing cant, wasn't budging from their religion that says that regulations are bad.

When Kerry asked him how he would respond to the Know Nothings in his party like Inhofe, who still insists the whole thing is a hoax, Gingrich said "the evidence is sufficient that we should move toward the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon loading in the atmosphere." No one expects that-- or anything rational-- to slow down Inhofe. Today's MarketWatch wrote about the aftermath of the Supreme Court chiding the Bush Regime to get off the dime on the subject. "The Environmental Protection Agency, rebuked by the Supreme Court for not clamping down on tailpipe emissions, said Tuesday it is looking at a broad range of options to cut pollution from the nation's cars and trucks." Hmmm... not that far different from asking Enron to guard pensions or Barry Bonds to investigate steroids. The EPA announced that they have "finalized the renewable fuels standard program passed by Congress in 2005. The program requires domestic refiners to blend at least 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels, such as corn-based ethanol, into gasoline by 2012." Way, way too little and probably too late as well.