Republican hopefuls deny global warming

Environment
Source Guardian (UK)

All but one of the 48 Republican hopefuls for the Senate mid-term elections in November deny the existence of climate change or oppose action on global warming, according to a report released today. The strong Republican front against established science includes entrenched Senate leaders as well as the new wave of radical conservatives endorsed by the Tea Party activists, says a report by the Center for American Progress. As election season gets under way, Tea Party favorites such as Joe Miller, who caused the biggest upset of the primaries when he defeated the Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski in Alaska last month, have been upfront about their doubts on climate science. "We haven't heard there's man-made global warming," Miller told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. But the challenge to science goes beyond Tea Party favorites to corporate titans such as Carly Fiorina, who was the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, and is running for the Senate in California. Fiorina has said on repeated occasions that she is "not sure" climate change is real. Even John McCain, the two-time presidential candidate who worked for years to get climate change legislation through the Senate, has now cooled on the idea, calling a recent cap-and-trade bill a "monstrosity". Only one Republican contender, Mike Castle of Delaware, has bucked the Republican line against climate science. But he faces a tough battle in the primary election from emerging favorite Christine O'Donnell, who has said climate action would kill jobs. The rising opposition to science and action on climate change caps a year of crushing defeats for environmentalists in Congress. Supporters of action on climate change now fear that Congress could be weighted even more against them, once the elections are over. "If they win, the number of card-carrying members of this "Flat Earth Society" will rise exponentially in the world's greatest deliberative body," said Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters, in an email to reporters.