Zinke defends Trump's climate cuts by getting facts wrong

[Eugene]

Source: Think Progress

Natasha GeilingFollow
Reporter at ThinkProgress.
Jun 8

Zinke defends Trump’s climate cuts by getting facts wrong

On Thursday, while every major news channel was trained on former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke was busy defending the Trump administration’s budget before the House Appropriations Interior and Environment Subcommittee.

Under the proposed budget, the Department of the Interior — which manages about 500 million acres across the country — would see its funding cut by 13 percent. Climate programs, in particular, would take a substantial cut, seeing reductions of around 80 percent.

Those cuts reflect a complete shift in priorities from the Obama administration — which made climate action a pivotal part of its domestic policy — to the Trump administration, which has rolled back U.S. climate action in favor of fossil fuel extraction. As the cabinet member in charge of the United States’ federal lands — which contain extensive deposits of untapped coal, oil, and gas — Zinke is in a particularly powerful position to influence the administration’s climate change policies. So Rep. Betty McCollum (MN), the ranking Democratic member on the subcommittee, specifically asked about the administration’s pivot.

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What followed was an approximately three-minute exchange, in which Zinke gave at least six misleading statements about climate science, climate policy, and the Paris climate agreement (the exchange begins about 45 minutes into the video below).

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Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/zinke-budget-hearing-climate-change-falsehoods-7b0253272ddd

[Ilsa]

1. Well, if the facts don't fit your policy,

just create some alternative facts.

Pruitt did it, claiming 50,000 coal mining jobs have been created. Only about 500 coal jobs were created; the rest were other mining jobs.