VIDEO: Cory Gardner Says Climate Scientists "Want To Tell Us How We Live Our Lives"
Speaking at a right-wing conference in Steamboat Springs, Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) claimed climate policy is a conspiracy to attack workers in the fossil-fuel industry.
“You know what? This is more than a war on coal, this is a war on workers,” he said. “This is a president who has decided he doesn’t like those jobs, he doesn’t like what they’re doing, and he’s going to put them out of business and out of work.”
“It’s a war on the kind of energy we use every day — fossil fuels — whether it’s gas, coal, oil,” he continued, “because they want to tell us how we live our lives, how we heat our homes, we drive our cars.”
Dick and Liz Cheney were the featured stars at the Steamboat Institute Freedom Conference, which took place in Steamboat Springs, Colo., on August 23, 2013. Gardner was the first speaker at the conference.
Refusing to accept the reality of fossil-fueled global warming, Gardner described policy attempts to reduce fossil-fuel pollution as part of a liberal conspiracy against hard-working Americans.
“It’s about the kind of work that thousands and thousands of men and women are doing each and every day,” Gardner claimed President Obama opposes, “working hard each and every day, to make our lives better, to give us a chance to build a way of life for our families.”
In reality, the coal industry, whose carbon pollution remains unregulated, has been marked by reduced employment and higher corporate profits, as labor protections and regulations have been blocked or eliminated by conservatives.
Gardner went on to criticize Obama and his scientific advisors for explanations they made of how market forces would encourage fuel-switching away from coal given a price on carbon pollution. In doing so, he misidentified Harvard geochemist Dan Schrag, a member of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, as Obama’s top science advisor, who is in fact Harvard physicist John Holdren.
Both Schrag and Holdren have publicly described the need to dramatically reduce carbon emissions to reduce the catastrophic impacts of climate change.
Transcript:
CORY GARDNER: You know what? This is more than a war on coal, this is a war on workers. This is a president who has decided he doesn’t like those jobs, he doesn’t like what they’re doing, and he’s going to put them out of business and out of work.This is a president who said when he ran for office, ‘Under my plan, electricity rates would necessarily going to skyrocket.’
This is a president whose Secretary of Energy said he’d like to see European-style energy prices.
This is a president whose top science advisor said, ‘A war on coal is exactly what we need.’
It’s more than a war on coal, though. It’s a war on the kind of energy that we use every day, fossil fuels, whether it’s gas, coal, oil, because they want to tell us how we live our lives, how we heat our homes, how we drive our cars.
But make no — it is not just about coal, though. It’s about the kind of work that thousands and thousands of men and women are doing each and every day, that we don’t do, because we’ve chosen other options in life, but they’re in a mine, deep under the ground, in a pit, working heavy equipment, working hard each and every day, to make our lives better, to give us a chance to build a way of life for our families. This president has decided he doesn’t like those jobs. And that’s simply wrong. And we’ve got to hold him accountable for it. I hope you’ll — In northwestern Colorado let’s make sure every — every rotary club, every school, every chamber, everybody knows about it, and that the voices are heard in Washington DC.
Thank you very much, Steamboat Institute, and have a great, great rest of the weekend.