Former Senator Jim Inhofe Passes Away at 89

(ProsperNews.net) -Former Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe has died at age 89. The Republican’s family confirmed his death, saying it was caused by a stroke. Mr. Inhofe, who was known for his outspoken views on climate change, served in the US Senate from 1994 until his retirement last year. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell said the Oklahoma lawmaker transformed the American energy market and brought prosperity to the Sooner State. Additionally, McConnell praised Inhofe for his commitment to the US military, which had “strengthened the security of the entire free world.”

Born in Iowa in 1934, Inhofe moved to Oklahoma as a child. In his first political campaign, he successfully ran for a seat in the Sooner State’s House of Representatives in 1966 and was sworn in on December 29. Two years later, he entered the Oklahoma Senate. Taking a slightly different political direction in 1978, Mr. Inhofe stood for Mayor of Tulsa, winning the role with widespread Republican support – he triumphed in the party’s primary election with 92% of the vote. Before entering the US Senate, Inhofe sat in the House of Representatives, having been elected in 1986.

Known for strong conservative viewpoints, the longest-serving Oklahoma Senator proposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and opposed laws preventing employers from firing employees because they were gay. In 2015, he famously brought a snowball into the House of Representatives, attempting to prove that global warming was a myth. Inhofe used the snowball to refute claims that 2014 had been the hottest year on record. Years earlier, he built a makeshift igloo from snow in Washington, DC, and called it “Al Gore’s New Home.”

The Senator described climate change as the “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a “Gestapo bureaucracy.” He said human arrogance allowed people to believe they were powerful enough to impact weather and climate and denounced such views as outrageous. “God’s still up there,” he said.