Crazy Bus Nearing Panic: Another Climate Denier Moving Toward the Exit
January 28, 2015
As much as I’ve been banging the drum about changing poll numbers on climate change – whoo boy, Republican internal numbers must be rather spectacular. Another climate denier is asking to get off the crazy bus…
Rick Perry’s farewell speech to the Texas legislature listed the accomplishments expected from an outgoing Republican governor of the country’s largest oil-producing state. But his Jan. 15 speech also did something less predictable: touting his environmental record, from lowering Texas’ carbon emissions to turning the state into a global leader in wind energy production.
“We have expanded our economy while protecting our environment,” said Perry, who is openly exploring a second White House run in 2016.
It was a greener message than the one he delivered ahead of his last presidential campaign, when he called climate change a “contrived phony mess,” and it reflects an expectation among some in the party that voters in 2016 will want Republican candidates to develop a more sophisticated climate change message.
“‘I’m not a scientist’ won’t be a winner in the presidential field,” Republican strategist Ford O’Connell said of the now common response Republican lawmakers and candidates offer when asked about climate change.
The search for a new message on climate change is driven by electoral math.
While leaders of the Republican-controlled Congress have vowed to block regulations to control carbon emissions, a poll by Yale University earlier this month found that 56 percent of Republicans support regulating climate-warming greenhouse gases.
“Red state disputation of science isn’t going to work,” said former South Carolina congressman Bob Inglis, noting that voters skew younger and more independent during presidential election cycles.
UPDATE: Video of Perry’s speech – short segment includes the boasts about renewables and a lower carbon footprint.
In the video above, Perry is still on message promoting the fossil fuel “all of the above” energy strategy, and the Keystone pipeline – but clearly there is movement dimly acknowledging reality.
In June, 2014, Perry compared limits on carbon to a nuclear attack, below.
He offered a scathing critique of the Obama administration’s policies on climate change, including regulations proposed earlier this month to cut carbon emissions. (The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on a pending legal challenge Texas filed against other EPA regulations.)
“I don’t believe that we have the settled science by any sense of the imagination to stop that kind of economic opportunity” offered by an expansion of oil and gas exploration, and approval of the Keystone pipeline, which would bring crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast.
The governor was adamant that carbon dioxide is not, in fact, a pollutant. Curbing the use of coal will “strangle our economy,” he asserted.
“Calling CO2 a pollutant is doing a disservice the country, and I believe a disservice to the world,” he said.
“I’m not a scientist,” he said. But “short term, I’m substantially more concerned about Iran changing the temperature of New York” – an allusion to a nuclear attack – than about potential climate change 50 years from now stemming from today’s environmental policies.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
January 28, 2015 at 9:35 am
Reblogged this on Joe's Notepad.
January 28, 2015 at 11:54 am
“…but clearly there is movement dimly acknowledging reality….” sounds a bit oxymoronic, although “clearly-dimly” fits Perry well.
I wouldn’t hold out too much hope that he has gone green, though. IMO, it’s simply an attempt at “image enhancing”, just like those $500 designer glasses he is now wearing all the time as he tries to “look smart”. Unfortunately, the ears that hold up the glasses are attached to the same empty head.
I predict that he and all the other members of the clown herd running for the Repugnant nomination will waffle and change positions on AGW depending on how the “wind” blows. They will be getting on and off the crazy bus many times before it arrives at its destination, and changing seats every mile of the way.
PS Has anyone on Crock ever been lucky enough to observe a School Bus Emergency Evacuation Drill? The kids are required to open the emergency doors without help and exit through them by jumping to the ground. One or two kids on nearly every bus manage to half knock themselves out by whacking their heads on the door jamb (because they are focusing on the jump). When the Repugnant Crazy Clown Bus holds the many emergency evacuation drills it will need, I predict that ALL of them will whack their heads on the way out the door. (There’s a metaphor in there somewhere).
January 28, 2015 at 12:13 pm
I don’t see how this is a shift in his ‘opinion’ about climate change. He’s just taking credit for a largely private sector occurrence, just like President Obama does with oil production the past 7 years.
On Perry’s glasses, I’ve suspected for a while it’s an image thing to make him appear more intelligent to the voters, and as an indication of a desire to run again for the 2016 nomination. Here’s a lampooning of it:
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/rick-perry-hopes-combination-of-wearing-glasses-and-not-talking-will-make-him-seem-smarter
January 28, 2015 at 1:42 pm
Article checking Perry’s nitrous oxide and ozone claims:
http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2014/may/26/rick-perry/perry-correct-reductions-ozone-industrial-nox-emis/
On these, he’s taking credit for an effect from federal regulations, and isn’t counting the full sources of these emissions.
January 28, 2015 at 5:14 pm
Hasn’t Romney changed his views as well, to gear up for 2016? I thought I might have heard that on The Young Turks – that he was going to run partly on a carbon lowering platform. Well, perhaps not those particular words, but something similar.
January 28, 2015 at 10:38 pm
Rick Perry may well be heading for a criminal conviction.
January 28, 2015 at 11:18 pm
Yes, the WashPost reported today that his lawyer’s request to have the charges against him dropped was denied by the judge and the case is going forward. Maybe the same folks that contributed to VA Gov Bob McDonnell’s defense fund will come to Perry’s aid also.
January 31, 2015 at 9:56 am
[…] out, or was pushed, from the clown car. Several other candidates, including Marco Rubio, and even Rick Perry, showed evidence of reviewing their climate denial rhetoric. Of course, “..one of the […]
December 10, 2015 at 3:00 pm
[…] so engrained in the US political system it can lead to all sorts of laughable absurdities. Such as arch-climate denier Rick Perry talking up the success of Texas wind farms in reducing America’s carbon footprint (Texas has more wind farms now than any other US […]