This week in climate change, a conservative New Hampshire voter asked Florida Sen. Marco Rubio if there are free enterprise solutions to solving climate change.
“I believe there are free enterprise solutions that can make us cleaner and more energy efficient,” Rubio responded. “I think it’s already happening. American energy has, for example, figured out a way to utilize natural gas that we never knew we have access to because the American innovator figured out how to drill sideways.”
“I want us to lead the world in every energy source. I want us to have the most vibrant and the most diverse energy portfolio possible,” Rubio said. “Do I think the American free enterprise system can find solutions that make our economy healthier and also our environment cleaner, I do believe that. But we have to give them the space to do that.”
Speaking at a private campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum told potential voters that he read Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment and that he believes that with his climate message, the pontiff is trying to appeal to a broader, more secular constituency in the U.S. and abroad.
“I’m going to give him space to weave that narrative,” Santorum, a devout Catholic, said.
The former senator added that he is “not a believer” in the global climate crisis and that the issue is pressed by the left in order to “gain more power and control over what we do.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz chaired a climate change hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. Titled “Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Earth’s Climate,” the hearing featured five witnesses, four of whom question climate science.
“There has been no significant global warming in the past 18 years,” Cruz said in his opening statement. Cruz often points to satellite data to back up his claims. “I believe that public policy should follow the actual science and the actual data and evidence, and not political and partisan claims that run contrary to the science and data and analysis,” Cruz said.
Fellow Commerce Committee member Rubio skipped the hearing.