Mark Kirk and the Climate Change Bill

He was against it before he was for it. As per his usual voting pattern, Kirk voted against the bill on the procedural votes. He voted against ordering the previous question on H. RES. 587, the bill to consider H.R. 2454 and voted against agreeing to the resolution of H.Res. 587. He also voted in favor of Forbes substitute amendment. That bill was basically a series of contests to see who can come up with the most energy efficient "thing" for lack of a better word to describe it. There were prizes! Waxman called it a "grant program" and wondered why they didn't give out any prizes during the past 8 years.

Kirk emailed around the district to explain his vote. Interestingly, in it he admitted his work for the Competitive Enterprise Institute to convince people that global warming did not exist (not in so many words, but he said:

In 1998 and 1999, I served as part of the U.S. delegation to both the Kyoto and Buenos Aires UN Climate Change conferences. In those years, there was a significant debate about the amount and effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide. I was a skeptic and spent hundreds of hours on the subject of climate science. In the Congress, our job is to learn as much as possible from the latest peer-reviewed non-partisan scientists and then plot the best course for our nation.)

Actually, they did not call themselves "skeptics". They called themselves "contrarians", a better word fit. I think he wants to talk about this more to gain conservative creds for his senate run while voting to not completely offend his very environmental district.

Kirk called Forbes grand prize sweepstakes the "idea" solution in his email. He also gave ex-President Bush credit for recognizing the relationship between carbon dioxide levels and temperature, basically recognizing global warming. That's sort of misleading. Bush's EPA ultimately reluctantly admitted global warming, but Bush scoffed at the report and did nothing about it. Basically, Kirk would rather be in the Bush years on global warming which means that if you are an environmentalist, you probably want Kirk to be with Bush, in retirement.