This is Rep. John Shimkus from Illinois. He represents much of the south half of the state (more rural and more Christian).
Here’s Shimkus at a hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment earlier in the week.
Money quote:
The Earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a flood… God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.
On the up side… he refers to the age of dinosaurs so at least he’s not a Young-Earth-er…?
This is the same man who also embarrassed himself this week by saying this about capping carbon dioxide emissions:
It’s plant food. … So if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere? … So all our good intentions could be for naught. In fact, we could be doing just the opposite of what the people who want to save the world are saying.
As Matt Yglesias points out,
The point about our CO2 emissions is that the rate at which fossil fuel use puts new carbon into the atmosphere greatly exceeds the rate at which plants remove it. The aim is not to eliminate the CO2 from the atmosphere but to stabilize the amount of CO2, which means curtailing emissions to a level much closer to the rate at which plants consume it.
Shimkus is a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, including the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee and the Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials.
Who the hell elected him? He’s anti-Evolution, anti-Global Warming, and anti-intellectual.
If you go to his website to look at a map of his district, this is one of the rotating images that comes up:
That’s something to be proud of?
I blame you, Effingham, IL.
(Thanks to Mike for the link!)