Republicans running climate change denier for Governor in Maine

onSep 28, 2010 @ 16:01 PDT

Paul LePage, the Republican (and Tea Party) candidate for Governor in the State of Maine is on the record as early as two weeks ago stating that there is still no scientific agreement on the realities of global warming.

This is of course despite decades of research by some of the top scientific academies in the world like the US National Academy of Science, NASA and the UK Royal Society.

Here’s what LePage had to say in a recent interview:

“Next one is very difficult, is true science. I’ve been listening about global warming for years. You have the pros and the cons. Quite frankly, we need to get our scientific community to come up to a baseline of a common agenda, a common understanding of where we are. Science has to be proven to be fact and if the science is not true, it’s not proven, then it’s rhetoric.”

By LePages’ defintition, the only rhetoric is from those who continue to say climate change isn’t happening despite a complete lack of scientific evidence to back up their claim.

It is not a coincidence that LePage is listed as a member of the Heritage Foundation, a free-market think tank that has recieved hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years from the fossil fuel industry to seed doubt about the science behind climate change.

If the Heritage Foundation is where LePage is getting his scientific information, instead of actual scientific organizations, then Maine voters may wake up the day after the election to see their State looking backwards at a fake debate about the realities of climate change, instead of forward to the solutions.

Here’s the clip of LePage talking about climate change (at the 4 min. 37 second mark):

By Kevin Grandia

Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.