That’s according to Cruz himself, who on Tuesday said he would withdraw the U.S. from the historic climate agreement reached in Paris earlier this month. That non-binding agreement saw nearly 200 leading nations unanimously embrace a plan that would leave most of the world’s fossil fuels unburned, thereby limiting global warming “to well below 2°C [3.6°F] above preindustrial levels.”
According to the Washington Post, Cruz said the international agreement was disingenuous — not really to fight climate change, but to gain “more and more government power.”
“Barack Obama seems to think the SUV parked in your driveway is a bigger threat to national security than radical Islamic terrorists who want to kill us. That’s just nutty,” Cruz said. “These are ideologues, they don’t focus on the facts, they won’t address the facts, and what they’re interested [in] instead is more and more government power.”
Though the Department of Defense and other security agencies do consider climate change a security threat, the Paris climate deal was intended to fight other harmful impacts of global warming, including catastrophic food shortages, sharply increased extinction rates, and irreversible sea-level rise, among other things.
Cruz, however, fervently denies that those impacts exist. Earlier this month, Cruz held an entire hearing to discuss what he believes to be inaccuracies in scientific data surrounding climate change. Unfortunately, Cruz seemed to willfully misinterpret data — he conflated the Antarctic with the Arctic to make it seem like ice melt predictions were incorrect; he cited the work of a scientist who has publicly insulted Cruz for misusing his research; and he even discredited the scientific method by comparing climate scientists to flat-Earthers.
Though Cruz’s denial of mainstream climate science is in line with many members of the Republican party, his desire to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement is not. A Reuters poll released Wednesday showed that a majority — 58 percent — of U.S. Republicans support working with other countries to solve the problem of global warming.
Read more at Ted Cruz Vows Not to Honor Global Climate Deal as President
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