US climate denier laughs off EPA CO2 ruling

One of the US’s most high-profile climate deniers made an extraordinary appearance on Newsnight last night in which he laughed off the idea that greenhouse gases were dangerous to human health.

Speaking in the wake of the Environmental Protection Agency’s pronouncement that emissions of carbon dioxide and five other gases endangered the public and would have to be cut, Jim Sensenbrenner, lead Republican on the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, said:

“Well I think they’re wrong and they’re basing it upon erroneous Supreme Court decisions. Every time we exhale we exhale CO2 and that certainly is not a health hazard.

“CO2 also makes things green John. No CO2 no growing.”

Watch it here:

Not content with being climate deniers or just plain selfish, the sceptics now seem to be denying the dangers of an excess of CO2, contradicting themselves as they go along. And how exactly does Congressman Sensenbrenner believe CO2 “makes things green”? Maybe by being absorbed by rainforests – which the Right have never expressed a desire to save – and released as oxygen into the atmosphere.

As far as Sensenbrenner is concerned, it is also worth pointing out that, as with Tory grandees Nigel Lawson and Peter Lilley, there may be a more sinister, underhand motive to his refusal to accept the truth. Yesterday’s New York Times reports Sensenbrenner and his wife’s recent weekend junket to Europe where they “toured a prince’s vineyard and castle in Liechtenstein and spent an afternoon at a ski resort in the Alps” – at a cost of $14,708 and a breach of Congressional rules.

It was one of five European trips Sensenbenner has undertaken from that company alone in the past four years at an estimated cost of $60,000. When challenged by John Prescott, he also refused to acknowledge the fact that America pollutes at 20 tonnes per person, China 5, Europe 10, Africa 1 and India 2.