By Brad Johnson/Think Progress
Speaking at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney reversed his earlier stance on climate change pollution and rejected man-made global warming. Because “
we don’t know what’s causing climate change,” Romney said, the United States should not reduce carbon dioxide emissions:
My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.
Watch it:
“I think the EPA, acting in concert with the president, really doesn’t like oil, gas, coal, and nuclear,” Romney said in response to another question. “I really do believe that
the EPA wants to get its hands on all of energy and be able to crush it to cause prices to go through the roof.” To applause, he concluded that “the EPA should not be regulating carbon dioxide.”
In June, Romney told a New Hampshire audience that he believed in man-made global warming, and that reducing greenhouse pollution is “
important“:
I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that. I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know that there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past but I believe we contribute to that. And so I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.
As governor of Massachusetts, Romney presided over plans to regulate carbon dioxide as a “
pollutant,” and was advised by Dr. John Holdren, now President Obama’s scientific adviser.
Transcript:
Q: What is your position on man-made global warming and would you reject legislation, such as cap and trade, which is based on the idea of man-made global warming?
ROMNEY: Man-made global warming and cap and trade and so forth – I actually had in Massachusetts a consortium of states that came together with a cap and trade program. It was called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. And all the governors, Governor Pataki and so forth, signed it. I refused to sign.
I do not believe in a cap and trade program.
By the way, they do not call it America warming, they call it global warming. So the idea of America spending massive amounts, trillions of dollars to somehow stop global warming is not a great idea. It loses jobs for Americans and ultimately it won’t be successful, because industries that are energy intensive will just get up and go somewhere else. So it doesn’t make any sense at all.
My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.
My view with regards to energy policy is pretty straightforward. I want us to become energy secure and independent of the oil cartels. And that means let’s aggressively develop our oil, our gas, our coal, our nuclear power.
Look, Marcellus Shale is a huge godsend for the nation. Let’s develop it aggressively.
Oil has been discovered in North Dakota. I’m told that the discoveries in North Dakota suggest that we have oil there which will exceed what we found in Prudhoe Bay in Alaska.
So we have massive energy resources. Let’s grant the permits to let the drillers start drilling and provide those resources in America. We will create jobs here and make sure that we have the energy independence from the cartels that’s good for our foreign policy, for our national security, and for our economy
