Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman, arguably Mitt Romney’s most effective critic, called the former Massachusetts governor a “perfectly lubricated weathervane” in light of his several dozen flip-flops.
Right on cue, Romney appeared eager to help prove Huntsman right.
Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney is trying to cement his status as a skeptic of man-made global warming after coming under fire from conservatives this summer for saying that humans contribute to climate change.
“My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet,” Romney said during a speech in Pittsburgh Thursday, a clip of which was posted by the liberal blog Think Progress. “And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.”
Here’s the video, posted by Brad Johnson.
The problem, of course, is two-fold. First, Romney is completely wrong on the policy. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists have ample evidence pointing to human activities driving climate change, and reducing carbon emission is exactly the right course.
And second, Romney, who’s never met a debate he wouldn’t take both sides of, is on record believing the opposite of what he said yesterday. “It’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors,” Romney said in June. “I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that.”
What’s more, as Johnson noted, as governor, Romney “presided over plans to regulate carbon dioxide as a ‘pollutant,’ and was advised by Dr. John Holdren, now President Obama’s scientific adviser.”
Over the summer, Rush Limbaugh said of Romney’s approach to climate science, “Bye-bye, nomination.”
Limbaugh may have underestimated the ability of the “perfectly lubricated weathervane” to spin in the other direction.
