Fishy Smell from the Wall Street Journal

Late last night on the Senate floor, majority leader Harry Reid read aloud a strategy memo from the Republican party which described the current GOP strategy for derailing climate legislation:

The goal is for a theme (e.g. climate bill - higher gas prices) each day, and the focus is much more on making political points than in amending the bill, changing the baseline text for any future debate, or affecting policy.

As if a smoking gun, in the form of the memo, was even needed. The GOP leadership had already forced the Senate clerk to engage in the pointless exercise of reading aloud every word of the pending Lieberman-Warner bill into the Senate record. It took the poor clerk hours and hours.

The Wall Street Journal did its part to play a supporting role. On its op-ed page, the WSJ printed a piece called We Don't Need a Climate Tax on the Poor, which begins with this sentence that reprises the theme the GOP strategy memo singled out for broadcast:

With average gas prices across the country approaching $4 a gallon, it may be hard to believe, but the U.S. Senate is considering legislation this week that will further drive up the cost at the pump.

The author? None other than Senator James Inhofe who has been the self-professed champion in Congress of global warming denialism (only he calls it something else).

I have been battling global warming alarmism since 2003, when I became chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

But it is his editorial that is actually alarmist. Pass this climate bill now on the Senate floor, Inhofe warns, and gas will hit $5. In 2030.

Various analyses show that Lieberman-Warner would result in higher prices at the gas pump, between 41 cents and $1 per gallon by 2030.

Sounds pretty awful (if it's even true). But think about it -- that's merely an increase of about 1/2 % to 1% a year -- a gradual and reasonable economic adaptation to dwindling oil supplies and climate change. For that, Inhofe is raising an alarm, yet keeping silent about the 25% increase in gas prices over the last year.

Fish.

Does anyone smell fish?

Are Senator Inhofe and his cronies at the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages really concerned about the poor?

Or are they just making political points?

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