Gingrich’s Energy Policies Rile Conservative Critics

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/gingrichs-energy-policies-rile-conservative-critics/

February 14, 2011, 11:45 am

Gingrich’s Energy Policies Rile Conservative Critics

By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF

In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of conservative activists, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, http://www.americansolutions.com/energy/2011/02/newt-gingrich-at-cpac-2011.php">called last week for a radical shift in national energy and environmental policy, including the total dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency, the relaxation of coal mining regulations and quick approval for offshore drilling projects in the Arctic.

The reaction from some conservative commentators was swift and harsh. “Intellectually incoherent,” said Myron Ebell, the director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Asinine,” a blogger for the American Spectator http://spectator.org/blog/2011/02/10/american-energy-can-be-asinine">opined.

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Meanwhile, despite his opposition to the Democrats’ 2009 cap-and-trade bill, his past advocacy for action on global warming also puts him at odds with Tea Party supporters, the vast majority of whom say they doubt that climate change is occurring at all and declare that carbon dioxide emissions pose little or no threat to the climate.

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In his speech on Thursday, Mr. Gingrich made only passing mention of climate change, but in 2007, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/interviews/gingrich.html">he told PBS that he would “strongly support” a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide similar to the one for sulfur emissions signed into law by the first President Bush in the early 1990s.

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