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.
VIDEO: Cory Gardner: "We Have to Stand Up to the Radical Environmentalists"
Speaking at a right-wing conference, Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) denounced the “radical environmentalists” and “social engineers” who oppose the “individual job creators” who run fossil-fuel companies. Promising the Keystone XL pipeline will get built, Gardner went on to describe his allegiance to the fracking “shale revolution”: “We will rise up, and we will win!”
Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), now challenging Democrat Mark Udall’s U.S. Senate seat, has run a campaign as a “likeable” moderate.
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.
Gardner’s remarks about the “power” of fossil-fuel executives who “realize what is at stake in this country” alludes to the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers and other campaign contributors.
Gardner is a “long-time friend” of Americans for Prosperity Colorado head Jeff Crank, and is known to have appeared at the Koch’s 2014 summit in California. AFP and the Koch super PAC Freedom Partners have spent over $3 million supporting Gardner’s candidacy, primarily by attacking Udall. Koch Industries is Gardner’s top campaign contributor this cycle. Gardner, who joined Congress in 2011, has raked in $772,000 in campaign contributions from the oil & gas industry.
TRANSCRIPT:
We have to stand up to the radical environmentalists, the social engineers who believe that we must stop. And in Colorado we know that threat is real. We know they’re going to try to stop something that is creating jobs on the eastern plains and the western slope of this great state. We know they’re going to try to say no to the Marcellus, no to the Bakken. They’ve already tried to say no to the Keystone pipeline. But you know what? We know we’re going to win because of the power of our individual job creators. They are right, they are with us. And when the individuals realize what is at stake in this country, we will rise up, and we will win. The shale revolution is real.