Interior Secretary Zinke spews anti-climate testimony before Congress

The “alternative facts” that President Trump favors have apparently spread to other parts of his administration. During an appearance before the House Appropriations Interior and Environment Subcommittee, U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke repeatedly called the Paris climate agreement a “bad deal” and made numerous erroneous statements on climate change. Not only did Zinke falsely state that China, India, and Russia are let off the hook in the Paris Agreement, he also claimed there are no reliable scientific models on the effects of climate change or its links to human activity (a.k.a. burning fossil fuels). Zinke also cited the same MIT study that Trump did in his recent Paris pullout speech to insist that the international climate deal would have little to no impact on climate change. (MIT, by the way, has come out to say the remarks are misleading and that Trump mischaracterized the research.) In Zinke’s concluding remarks, he acknowledged that "CO2 is a concern"—then he rhetorically asked, "But what can we do about it? What should we do about? What is the right path forward?" Well, Zinke, we can tell you that your pro-fossil fuel agenda is absolutely the wrong direction.