Senate Republicans fiddle while world warms: Our view

Since Republicans took control of the Senate in January, their actions on climate change have ranged from oblivious to laughable to reckless. Here's a first-quarter recap:

•Jan. 21: During a debate on the Keystone XL pipeline, the Senate voted on an amendment stating that the climate is changing and that humans are significantly responsible. Forty-nine Republicans opposed the amendment; only five — Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mark Kirk of Illinois — voted in favor. In other words, more than 90% of the Republican caucus rejected the overwhelming scientific consensus. So much for the "sense" of the Senate.

•Feb. 26: Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, chairman of — yes — the Environment and Public Works Committee, carried a lumpy snowball on to the Senate floor. Inhofe, author of The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, apparently regarded the presence of snow in Washington in February as evidence that the globe isn't warming. "Do you know what this is?" he asked. "It's a snowball just from outside here. So it's very, very cold out. Very unseasonable." Never mind that 2014 was the hottest year worldwide since modern record-keeping began, and the eastern U.S. has been an island of cool in a sea of global warmth.

•March 3: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., urged states to defy the Obama administration's flexible plan to curb carbon pollution from existing power plants, the nation's leading source of greenhouse gas emissions. "Hold back on the costly process of complying," he advised in an op-ed in the Lexington Herald-Leader. McConnell, playing to his state's large coal industry, followed up with a detailed letter to every governor. The Senate leader howls when he thinks the Obama administration is going beyond the law, as in changing immigration regulations unilaterally, but he doesn't seem to have a problem with heedlessly counseling states to break the rules.

In contrast to the Senate GOP's embarrassing, head-in-the-sand approach to climate change, other prominent Republicans — hardly environmental extremists but less attached to the fossil-fuel lobby — are promoting useful ideas that could help the U.S. achieve the 26%-28% emissions reduction from 2005 levels by 2025 that the Obama administration pledged Tuesday.

Hank Paulson, Treasury secretary in the George W. Bush administration, calls global warming "a crisis we can't afford to ignore," and his institute is funding research and advocating for faster action.

George Shultz, secretary of State during the Reagan administration and a pillar of the GOP establishment, is calling for "significant and sustained support" for energy research and development. Like Paulson, Shultz backs a revenue-neutral carbon tax that would level the playing field and prevent the atmosphere from being used as a free waste dump.

This plan would put the U.S. on a path toward lower emissions and provide American leadership going into this year's global climate talks. And what is the likelihood that this Senate will approve such a sensible, market-based policy?

Call it a snowball's chance.

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