Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney reversed his position on the underlying drivers of recent climate climate change, stating “we don’t know what’s causing climate change,” reports ThinkProgress.org.
Speaking at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Romney added that he didn’t believe the U.S. should reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet,” he said. “And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.”
Romney’s comment marks a shift away from earlier statements, where he said he believed that mankind is contributing to climate change. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney was involved in setting up the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. But Massachusetts dropped out of the initiative shortly before it was set to take effect.
Romney’s apparent flip-flop comes just days after an independent assessment of global climate led by a prominent climate change skeptic concluded that global warming is indeed real. Richard Muller, the project lead, and his team found that Earth is warming at the rate claimed by climate institutions such as NASA, NOAA, and UK’s Hadley Centre: 1°C (1.8°F) since 1950.
“Global warming is real,” wrote Muller in a subsequent editorial published in The Wall Street Journal. “Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate.”
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