Source: University of Chicago Institute of Politics
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZV4FeO3rJs
Date: 12/05/2014
Event: Al Gore: Republican climate scepticism an "enforced orthodoxy" controlled by the Kochs
Credit: University of Chicago Institute of Politics
People:
David Axelrod: There is a stream of thought, out there in our political environment - we had Senator Paul here, a couple of weeks ago, at the IOP, and I just wanted to play you just a few seconds of what he had to say, and follow up with you on it.
Rand Paul: I think that scientific debate should not be dumbed down to politics, and I think this debate has become so dumbed down beyond belief. The Earth is 4.5, 4.6 billion years old. Anybody who's ever studied any geology knows that over periods of time - long periods of time - that the climate changes. Okay? I'm not sure anybody exactly knows why, but we have 20, 30, 100 thousand year sort of cycles that go on with the climate. It has been much warmer than it is today. We have, you know, real data about 100 years. So, somebody tell me what 100 years' data is, in an Earth that's 4.6 billion years old. My guess is that the conclusions that you make from that are not conclusive.
Al Gore: Mm.
David Axelrod: So my first question is: have you studied geology?
Al Gore [laughs]: Well...
David Axelrod: And the second thing is: how do you respond? Because Senator Rubio said something similar the other day, and I think that there's a fair strain in the Republican Party - perhaps some Democrats from some coal states who have the same -
Al Gore: [Not clear but sounds like "What's that have to do with it?"]
David Axelrod: Er, you tell me. [Al Gore laughs.]
Al Gore: Um, no, when you say there's a strain in the Republican Party, there is an enforced orthodoxy in the Republican Party. Not too many years ago, John McCain ran on a platform acknowledging the climate crisis and making proposals to solve it. The nominee last time, when Mitt Romney was Governor of Massachusetts, same thing - he acknowledged it, took steps to try to deal with it, and there were a number of Republicans who took that position.
I don't think it's particularly complicated, why they have all been cowed into abandoning that position... They will face primary opponents financed by the Koch brothers, and others who are part of their group - if they even breathe the slightest breath of sympathy for the truth about climate science... I mean, it's not - it's not really that complicated.
And of course Senator Paul is from a coal state, and - but even if he were not, even if he were not, anyone who wants to set his or her aspirations on the Republican nomination for the Presidency in 2016 already knows that they can't possibly cross the Koch brothers and the others that are part of that group - large carbon polluters and ideological anti-statists who are really terrified that the government will do anything new. And so they want to - as Grover Norquist said famously, years ago, they want to shrink the government to where it can be "drowned in a bathtub".