GOP Logic: Drive a Hummer, Feed a Redwood

As House lawmakers continue to debate the Democrats’ climate change bill this week, we’re certain to hear some curious arguments coming from Congress’ global warming deniers who, ignoring just about every credible scientist on the globe, have continued to argue that the more than 6 billion humans roaming the earth are somehow having no effect on its environmental well-being. Indeed, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is already well on the record indicating that he doesn’t believe climate change to be influenced by humans. (And Aaron has already pointed out how Barton intends to stall the process with all manner of amendments that would dilute the proposal even more than it’s already been.)

So it comes as little surprise that House Republicans will be grabbing at all sorts of reasons why industry should be allowed to continue spewing whatever it wants into the air. Still, for sheer inanity within this debate, it would be difficult to top Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who appears in today’s Washington Post asking a witness at a congressional hearing whether cutting emissions will starve the world’s flora.

“If we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere?”

Maybe it’s time for an all-in congressional visit to the Natural History Museum.