Rick Santorum And Mike Huckabee Still Just Don’t Get It On Climate Change

The following post first appeared on FactCheck.org.

Two potential Republican candidates for president distorted the facts about climate change and casually dismissed well-established threats and potential solutions:

Santorum’s ‘Do-Nothing’ PlanSantorum, a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania who ran for president in 2012 and is preparing to run again in 2016, appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Jan. 25. Michael Smerconish, the show’s host, asked Santorum how he would have voted on a “sense of the Senate” amendment to the Keystone XL Pipeline Act that declared “climate change is real and not a hoax.” The measure overwhelmingly passed, with only Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, voting against it.

Smerconish, Jan. 25: The Senate voted this week 98 to 1 that climate change is not a hoax. If Rick Santorum were still in the Senate, would you have supported that?

Santorum: Is the climate warming? Clearly over the past, you know, 15 or 20 years the question is yes. The question is, is man having a significant impact on that, number one.

And number two, and this is even more important than the first, is there anything we can do about it? And the answer is, is there anything the United States can do about it? Clearly, no. Even folks who accept all of the science by the alarmists on the other side, recognize that everything that’s being considered by the United States will have almost — well, not almost, will have zero impact on it given what’s going on in the rest of the world.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report included a section on “human security,” and concluded that: “Climate change will have significant impacts on forms of migration that compromise human security.” Though the IPCC notes that “there are no robust global estimates of future displacement” due to climate change — in other words, exactly how many climate refugees we may see — the United Nations Refugee Agency wrote in a September 2014 report that the “vast majority” of 51.2 million “persons of concern” to the agency — which includes refugees, stateless persons and others — are in climate change hot-spots.

The threats to national security are not a new revelation.

In 2007, the federally funded Center for Naval Analyses (which provides research and analysis to military and other government agencies) released a report led by 11 retired three- and four-star admirals and generals; among its primary findings was the assertion that “projected climate change poses a serious threat to America’s national security.” That report as well highlighted the issue as a threat multiplier, and added that “projected climate change will add to tensions even in stable regions of the world.”

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– Dave Levitan

The Huffington Post