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Former Sen. Jim Inhofe, who went to lengths as a lawmaker to deny that climate change is exacerbated by human activity, died this week at 89 following a stroke, his family said.
Oklahoma's longest-serving senator, Inhofe was first elected to the Senate in 1994. He resigned in 2023, saying at the time that he wanted to spend more time with his wife. After he left office, however, he told the Tulsa World in an interview that he had stepped down because he had long Covid.
Inhofe's views often reflected the extreme leanings of his party. He was intensely homophobic (in opposing same-sex marriage, he once boasted to the Senate that in the "recorded history" of his family "we've never had a divorce or any kind of a homosexual relationship"), he was rabidly pro-gun (he once blamed mass shootings on "permissive laws" in sanctuary cities) and opposed abortion rights.
But Inhofe was best known for his zealous denial of the climate crisis and that human activity was its primary driver. (The New York Times reported, "Mining, oil, gas, coal and utility interests were generous contributors to Mr. Inhofe’s Senate campaigns.") Inhofe called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” In 2015, when he was chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, he infamously took a snowball onto the Senate floor during a snowstorm, ostensibly to demonstrate that global warming was not real.
Staffers told Politico's E&E News in 2020 that the stunt was intended to highlight media hypocrisy. “Whenever it’s hot in the summer, everyone’s like ‘Oh, my gosh, climate change!’ But if it’s something that doesn’t play into the global warming element, like a snowstorm in February, people don’t say, ‘Oh, my gosh, it’s climate change,’” the staffer who wrote the speech told the outlet.
The Oklahoma Republican was also a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, who shared his denial of climate science. Inhofe had an outsize influence on the Trump administration's environmental agenda, according to The Washington Post.
Yet he broke with members of his own party in 2020, opting to certify Joe Biden's election win in a move that earned him backlash among some Republicans. Twice, however, Inhofe voted against impeaching Trump.