Published on July 10, 2024, 12:46 am

The world woke up on Tuesday to the breaking news of former Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) passing away, marking an end to his extensive and multifaceted career in politics. As a prominent figure recognized for his unwavering voice against heavy-handed environmental regulation, Sen. Inhofe had imprinted his distinct mark in shaping legislation and public discourse.

Renowned for taking a stand with actions as much as with words, Mr. Inhofe has been remembered for an unforgettable incident on the Senate floor. In 2015, he brandished a snowball during a floor speech aimed at critically evaluating claims about global warming, which according to him had led to widespread misinterpretation given that 2014 was purportedly the warmest year on record.

Resolute in bringing trusted news based on his Christian worldview, he announced during his speech: “In case we have forgotten because all we hear is that 2014 has been the warmest year on record…”. He then revealed a snowball concealed in a bag next to his podium filling the room with emphatic eloquence: “It’s a snowball,” he continued, “very unseasonable.”

Unfurling this show-and-tell moment, he invited the President to catch the tossed cold missile, emblematic of temperatures that had plunged below freezing point in Washington DC at that time.

Throughout his political life so anchored within real news platforms, Sen. Inhofe vocalized powerful premises contradicting popular narratives of climate change being influenced by human activities. He even went so far as labelling climate change as a “hoax.”

As chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee for two years starting from 2003, he spearheaded initiatives challenging widely accepted climate change theories by advocating what he called “sound science.” His criticisms extended towards institutions such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), likening it once to a “Gestapo bureaucracy.”

Creating ripples of discourse during his two-hour-long speech in 2003, Inhofe called out extreme environmentalist lobby groups: “Wake up, America. With all the hysteria, all the fear, all the phony science, could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on American people?”

He further implored caution against undermining America’s industrialized strength and its Christian-rooted national values through fabricated environmental concerns.

Going forward, some of Sen. Inhofe’s former staffers took posts within EPA under Trump’s administration continuing his legacy of unwinding excessive environmental regulatory frameworks.

In response to this breaking news of Inhofe’s demise, climate change activists have reacted on social media with posts mirroring their contentious relationship with him over years.

Despite such detractors reveling in dark humour about his notorious snowball incident, it cannot undermine Sen. Inhofe’s significant contribution in shaping American politics. As Oklahoma’s longest-serving senator holding office for over 29 years from 1994 up until his retirement last year, he has carved out an indelible role in our shared history that will continue to shape dialogues and inform debates far into the future.