It was a quiet week on the climate front, just one year before voters will take to the polls to decide the next president.
Sen. Marco Rubio appeared on the Fox News show On the Record, where he reiterated his opposition to the current climate change approach and instead called for support of the “American innovator.” On a separate occasion this week, he said he would not support a carbon tax to combat climate change.
Donald Trump’s book was released on Tuesday. In it, he writes that sources of “green energy” are “really just an expensive way of making the tree-huggers feel good about themselves.”
Former New York Gov. George Pataki continued to push for Republicans to “embrace science.”
“There’s no question, none, that CO2 emitted by humans is a greenhouse gas that will warm the atmosphere all things being equal,” Pataki added. “That doesn’t mean we have to accept Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton’s big strategy of raising government power, government control over energy and manufacturing in this country.”
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul told an Iowa gathering of rural interests that he is “for the seasons” when asked about climate change. Earlier in the week, Paul told Glenn Beck, “Man might well have an influence on [climate change]. The unknown question is how much is man and how much is nature.”
“This is a question I love to ask to the apocalyptic crowd, the alarmists,” Paul added. “How much is man and how much is nature?”
Watch Pataki’s appearance on Fox News here: