Environment meeting closed to stop 'rhetoric'

BY GLENN THRUSH | Newsday Washington Bureau

May 26, 2006

WASHINGTON - Senate environment committee chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has called global warming a hoax, held a roundtable on greenhouse gases behind closed doors yesterday - in part to muzzle Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and other green Democrats, aides said.

"When we open it up, there are certain people, you know, who want to use rhetoric as opposed to fact," said a GOP staffer, who included Clinton among the Democrats who "grandstanded" on the issue. "We want to gather facts, not hear rhetoric, and this is the best way to do it."

On Wednesday, Inhofe told Inside EPA, a trade publication, that he had closed the meeting because "certain senators do act differently" when the media and public were present.

Earlier this week, Inhofe was the Republican point man who countered Clinton's energy speech, a wide-ranging denunciation of Bush administration policies and a call to address global climate change.

"Senator Clinton's rhetoric doesn't match her Senate record," Inhofe said after the address, adding that her plan wouldn't do anything "except gain a few headlines in a few newspapers."

Inhofe, who closed the session two weeks ago over the objections of Democrats, also barred the public and media from an April 6 roundtable on nanotechnology. While not unprecedented, such moves are unusual unless the topics include national security or intelligence.

A Clinton spokesman declined comment.

Oklahoma's senior senator is best known for denying the impact of climate change and for inviting science-fiction novelist Michael Crichton, a global warming denier, to testify in open committee. In August 2003, he told the Senate he thought "man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

Clinton didn't drop by yesterday's roundtable, which included Inhofe, officials from the energy department, General Electric, the Union of Concerned Scientists and BP, the British energy company. Committee members Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Delaware Democrat Thomas Carper, both outspoken critics on global warming theories, attended for a time.

A Democratic staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Inhofe's decision to shutter the event "had nothing to do with Hillary" and everything to do with his desire to dodge "embarrassing questions about the 'hoax' comment."