Yesterday I had the chance to spend some time with Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), the conservative stalwart who has spent the last several years trying to fight off attempts from members of both parties to impose a ruinous cap-and-trade system to control energy production and usage in the US.   He now has a book coming out at the end of the month, The Great Hoax, in which he discusses his fight against global-warming alarmists and the real motivation behind the UN’s IPCC efforts — to gain control of an independent revenue stream that would make Turtle Bay completely unaccountable to its member nations.  With more and more climate-change scientists abandoning the so-called “consensus,” Inhofe’s book comes at a perfect time to put AGW on ice, and in the full interview, he gives us an advance look at the book.

Before we get to the entire interview, though, I have one highlight regarding the presidential election.  Inhofe had endorsed Rick Perry last year as the candidate who could best address the jobs issue as well as the global-warming encroachment on energy production.  I asked him to assess the race now, and Inhofe tells me that he probably won’t make a formal endorsement — but that only one candidate can seriously address his four key issues of this election:

The four areas are fiscal (budget deficits, which Inhofe blames entirely on Barack Obama), the decline of the military, energy production, and the rapid growth of the regulatory regime.  Inhofe says the best candidate of the four remaining to deal with all four issues is … Rick Santorum.  It’s not a formal endorsement, but it certainly is a key statement of support from a well-respected conservative on Capitol Hill.

Inhofe has plenty more to say in the full interview, including a preview of his speech at CPAC this week and more discussion of the Presidential race.  We also talked about sequestration in defense funding, which comes on top of cuts already made by Robert Gates at the Pentagon of a separate half-billion dollars over the next ten years, which followed a discussion that Bruce McQuain and I had with Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon earlier in the day.  I’ll have something to write about that later.  Meanwhile, enjoy the full interview.