Romney choosing climate skeptic as running mate

By Lisa Hymas<><><><>

Mitt is thinking hard about which boring white man to choose as his running mate. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

OK, alright, Romney hasn’t actually picked his VP candidate yet, but we can already say with near-100 percent certainly that it’ll be someone who’s skeptical about the climate crisis and doubts that it’s significantly driven by human activity.

This is because virtually all high-level Republicans are skeptical about the climate crisis, at least judging by their public statements and actions. To find a Republican who believes that we ought to do even a little something about global warming, Romney would have to wade into the garbage bin of GOP politics and consort with losers and has-beens like Charlie Crist andJon Huntsman. Fat chance.

Here are some of the incredibly boring white guys Romney might actually pick (along with a few outlier options who are non-white, non-boring, and/or non-guys), and some of the illuminating things they’ve said about climate change:

Jeb Bush

Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida

“I’m a skeptic. I’m not a scientist. I think the science has been politicized. I would be very wary of hollowing out our industrial base even further … It may be only partially man-made. It may not be warming by the way. The last six years we’ve actually had mean temperatures that are cooler.”

Mitch Daniels

Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana

“The [climate] debate, so far, has been dominated by ‘experts’ from the University of Hollywood and the P.C. Institute of Technology. … Any dissident voice is likely to be the target of a fatwa issued by one Alatollah [sic] or another of the climate change theocracy, branding the dissenter as a ‘denier’ for refusing to bow down to the ‘scientific consensus.’”

Bobby Jindal

Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana

“President Obama claims to be focusing this election year on the American economy. To make that pledge true, he must make wholesale changes to his energy policy and put energy prices and energy independence ahead of zealous adherence to left-wing environmental theory.”
(He didn’t say the word “climate,” but we can read between the lines.)

Susana Martinez (Photo by Albuquerque Public Schools)

Susana Martinez, governor of New Mexico

“[T]here is disagreement in the science community concerning the causes of global warming.”

Bob McDonnell

Bob McDonnell, governor of Virginia

“Humans might be part of the cause, but too often in the debate it’s missed that the Earth has been warmer in the past and it has been a lot cooler in the past. … So I would say the science is mixed on a lot of those things.”

Tim Pawlenty

Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota

“So there is climate change, but the reality is the science of it indicates that most of it, if not all of it, is caused by natural causes. And as to the potential human contribution to that, there’s a great scientific dispute about that very issue.”

Rob Portman

Rob Portman, senator from Ohio

“When you analyze all the data, there is a warming trend according to science. But the jury is out on the degree of how much is man-made.”

Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio, senator from Florida

“The climate is always changing. The climate is never static. The question is whether it’s caused by man-made activity and whether it justifies economically destructive government regulation.”

Paul Ryan (Photo by Republican Conference)

Paul Ryan, rep from Wisconsin

“Unilateral economic restraint in the name of fighting global warming has been a tough sell in our communities, where much of the state is buried under snow … [E]mail exchangesfrom the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit … undermine confidence in the scientific data driving the climate change debates.”

Chris Christie (Photo by Bob Jagendorf)

Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey

“I’ve always said that climate change is real … we know enough to know that we are at least a part of the problem.”

Hey, wait, that’s not total denial! But Christie said it in a speech announcing that he was pulling New Jersey out of the first mandatory carbon cap-and-trade system in the country, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, so take it with your daily recommended allowance of salt.