Model Senate
Model Senate
The Model Senate project required students to step into the life of the United State's Congress through intensive research, discussion, and role playing in a live, full Senate simulation. Leading up to this full senate session, students researched the viewpoints of their assigned party, whether that was Democratic, Republican, or Independent. This research allowed students to get a deeper look into the inner-workings of Congress, while simultaneously learning about pressing issues such as Environmental Reform and Defense Spending as they relate to the modern global environment and economy. Following a bill from the early stages to the senate floor, students were able to grasp the full experience of political fluidity, as well as, more commonly, political gridlock.
My role throughout this process was to act as the Committee Chair of the Environmental and Public Works committee. This entailed running the two separate committee meetings on both the Monday and Tuesday exhibitions, and delving deeper into the issues as a leader who had the potential to sway members of his party. For this simulation, I played Jim Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma. As you will read in my speech below, Senator Inhofe is a huge man-made climate change denier, which made my position as the Committee Chair of the Environmental and Public Works Committee much more interesting to act out. On the actual night of the exhibition, I was very interested in the process that our Model Senate carried out in order to carry bills 1-2015 and 2-2015 through the Senate Floors and Committees, which was very efficient but equally entertaining near the end.
Looking back on this project, I am very glad that I had the opportunity to participate in something that helped me understand the United State's Government, my individual senator, and all of the senators around me. I learned that finding the balance between ideology and policy is not always so simple, and in this regard I began to respect the US Congress and their operations just slightly more.
My role throughout this process was to act as the Committee Chair of the Environmental and Public Works committee. This entailed running the two separate committee meetings on both the Monday and Tuesday exhibitions, and delving deeper into the issues as a leader who had the potential to sway members of his party. For this simulation, I played Jim Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma. As you will read in my speech below, Senator Inhofe is a huge man-made climate change denier, which made my position as the Committee Chair of the Environmental and Public Works Committee much more interesting to act out. On the actual night of the exhibition, I was very interested in the process that our Model Senate carried out in order to carry bills 1-2015 and 2-2015 through the Senate Floors and Committees, which was very efficient but equally entertaining near the end.
Looking back on this project, I am very glad that I had the opportunity to participate in something that helped me understand the United State's Government, my individual senator, and all of the senators around me. I learned that finding the balance between ideology and policy is not always so simple, and in this regard I began to respect the US Congress and their operations just slightly more.
Model Senate Speech
My name is Jim Inhofe, and today I will be speaking to the contents of Bill 2-2015, which was proposed under myself as Committee Chair in the Environmental and Public Works committee. While 2-2015 puts forward some, uh, good efforts to promote balance between industry and environment, I cannot support the free-market restriction and industry favoritism that this bill proposes.
In the past, I have, I have voted on many bills that incentivize - most namely cap and trade bills - environmental standards, and it has always been a belief of mine that these enforcements do more harm than good to the bottom line of the economy and tax paying Americans. And it has always been my opinion, similarly with this bill, that the science which is the foundation of these proposals is shaky at best. We get this report from the IPCC, the, uh, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and one of these scientist guys comes up with this image of the hockey stick. They show these graphs, these scenarios, where the, uh, the trend in global warming is low for a long period of time, and then we see this spike in recent decades. And so we get this image of this hockey stick on its side, and over at IPCC they’re arrogant enough to claim that this is all ‘man-made’ climate change. And in this bill, 2-2015, they say that ‘the vast majority of global warming occurring over the last 50 years was due to human activities.’ But this simply isn't true.
And so some might say, ‘well you’re not a scientist, leave the science to the professionals.’ But we’re at this point where solidarity is a reigning concern, and I think we have enough evidence to prove that climate change simply is not a huge threat at this point. Like, look here. You know what this is Mr. President? That’s right, a snowball. And there’s many more where this came from outside. Here, take a closer look. *tosses snowball* And we have more evidence all around us. Climate is a rising and falling pattern, and humans are not having enough noticeable impact on the environment to, uh, spark my concern. In my opinion, climate change is just a passing fad. But the American economy isn’t, and that’s what I felt was under-represented in this bill. We’ve been blessed with abundant natural resources in the North and South, and the limit of these resources would greatly hurt the American goal of domestic energy independence. If anything, I strongly propose to the Senate that we resurrect the Keystone Pipeline XL project as part of this bill, which would make best use of the resources we have been given, and give a huge boost to the job sector of this nation.
Because all I hear these days is “Oh, the science is settled, the science is settled.” But the science is not settled. We have these varying projections which are confusing at best, and there’s no consensus. They say ‘oh ninety-seven, ninety-eight percent of scientists agree,’ but I’ve got friends on the other side, and I can assure you that this is a false assumption. We’re at a point in time where we seriously need to reconsider our approach to climate change, and I do not think that that solution lies in this bill. Thank you.
**(Sidenote: Yes, I really threw a snowball on the Senate floor. Yes, it was awesome.)
In the past, I have, I have voted on many bills that incentivize - most namely cap and trade bills - environmental standards, and it has always been a belief of mine that these enforcements do more harm than good to the bottom line of the economy and tax paying Americans. And it has always been my opinion, similarly with this bill, that the science which is the foundation of these proposals is shaky at best. We get this report from the IPCC, the, uh, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and one of these scientist guys comes up with this image of the hockey stick. They show these graphs, these scenarios, where the, uh, the trend in global warming is low for a long period of time, and then we see this spike in recent decades. And so we get this image of this hockey stick on its side, and over at IPCC they’re arrogant enough to claim that this is all ‘man-made’ climate change. And in this bill, 2-2015, they say that ‘the vast majority of global warming occurring over the last 50 years was due to human activities.’ But this simply isn't true.
And so some might say, ‘well you’re not a scientist, leave the science to the professionals.’ But we’re at this point where solidarity is a reigning concern, and I think we have enough evidence to prove that climate change simply is not a huge threat at this point. Like, look here. You know what this is Mr. President? That’s right, a snowball. And there’s many more where this came from outside. Here, take a closer look. *tosses snowball* And we have more evidence all around us. Climate is a rising and falling pattern, and humans are not having enough noticeable impact on the environment to, uh, spark my concern. In my opinion, climate change is just a passing fad. But the American economy isn’t, and that’s what I felt was under-represented in this bill. We’ve been blessed with abundant natural resources in the North and South, and the limit of these resources would greatly hurt the American goal of domestic energy independence. If anything, I strongly propose to the Senate that we resurrect the Keystone Pipeline XL project as part of this bill, which would make best use of the resources we have been given, and give a huge boost to the job sector of this nation.
Because all I hear these days is “Oh, the science is settled, the science is settled.” But the science is not settled. We have these varying projections which are confusing at best, and there’s no consensus. They say ‘oh ninety-seven, ninety-eight percent of scientists agree,’ but I’ve got friends on the other side, and I can assure you that this is a false assumption. We’re at a point in time where we seriously need to reconsider our approach to climate change, and I do not think that that solution lies in this bill. Thank you.
**(Sidenote: Yes, I really threw a snowball on the Senate floor. Yes, it was awesome.)