On Wednesday, the League of Conservation Voters added Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann to its annual list of Congress’ worst environmental offenders. The group selects members of their “Dirty Dozen” list to target for electoral defeat, and this year they decided to add a special “people’s choice” category with an online vote—and Bachmann won by a “landslide,” the League said.
Bachamann’s take on global warming is among the more creative in Congress. See, for example, her floor speech on the subject during last summer’s debate of a climate bill:
Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can’t even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that’s on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that—that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth.
Global warming, she says, is “all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.” Last April, she called for an “armed and dangerous” revolution against measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. She also believes that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge “is the most perfect place on the planet to drill.” For all of this and more, she has received a 2 percent lifetime score from LCV.
Bachmann fired back yesterday, calling LCV an “ultra-liberal group obsessed with arcane restrictions that do little to help the environment and a great deal to harm the economy.”
Unseating Bachmann might be an environmental victory, but who else will provide such colorful commentary on climate?