Buddies battle over climate change bill

 

Senator Barbara Boxer, a hybrid-car-driving liberal, frequently calls climate change one of the greatest challenges of our generation.

Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer and ranking GOP member Jim Inhofe traded fierce fire last week as their committee battled over whether to move forward with a climate change bill. Those in the landscape industry need to weigh the pros and cons of a climate change bill. Look how it would affect the environment as well as your bottom line.

But behind closed doors, the California liberal and the Oklahoma conservative say they prefer exchanging global warming gag gifts more than partisan jabs.

Senator Jim Inhofe sees greenhouse gas limits as environmental thuggery environmentalists as alarmists and global warming as the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.

Inhofe brags about a mug he gave Boxer that shows sea levels rising to cover certain regions -- including most of California -- when heated up. In return, Boxer gave Inhofe a stuffed polar bear -- a toy version of an animal that scientists say is gravely threatened by global warming.

''We are really very good friends,'' said Boxer. ''It's a good working relationship we have. People are very surprised about it.''

Publicly, the two seem like anything but best buddies as they wrangle over the science of global warming in a fiercely partisan policy feud that has pushed their committee to the outskirts of the climate debate.

- Courtesy of Western Business Roundtable