Romney Regresses On Climate

Mitt Romney is never a dollar short, but he is often a day or more late. This week, he showed that he has not been keeping up with developments in climate science:

As he considers a third presidential campaign, Mitt Romney said Wednesday night that one of the country’s biggest challenges is climate change and that global solutions are needed to combat it.

“I’m one of those Republicans who thinks we are getting warmer and that we contribute to that,” he said.

Getting warmer since when? Since the end of the Little Ice Age, certainly; over the last 18 years, no. And human emissions of CO2 may contribute, in theory, to warming, but how much? Contemporary science has turned decisively away from global warming alarmism. The models on which it is based have been shown to be flat wrong, so that even the IPCC, the United Nations’ global warming lobbying branch, has drastically scaled back its predictions of future warming. Does Romney really not know this?

Romney had previously acknowledged that climate change is real, noting in his 2010 book that “human activity is a contributing factor.” But he questioned the extent to which man was contributing to the warming of the planet and said throughout his 2012 campaign that America shouldn’t spend significant resources combatting the problem.

So Romney had something closer to the right idea in 2012, and is now regressing on the issue, consistent with his overall strategy of sounding more like a liberal. Just what Republican primary voters are looking for!

Romney said Wednesday night that federal leaders have failed to enact global agreements needed to tackle the problem.

Yes, and that is one of the few things the Obama administration has done right. There is a reason why there never has been, and never will be, an international treaty to meaningfully limit CO2 emissions: India, China and other nations are not willing to join us in taking a vow of poverty.

This whole episode is typical of Romney’s tin ear. The last thing we need in a presidential nominee is someone who will try to prop up the scientifically discredited, but lavishly funded, effort to grab more power for government in the guise of fighting “climate change.” If the Democrats want to nominate such a candidate, fine: increasing government’s power over our lives is their core agenda. But Republican voters have no intention of joining in that charade.

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