NEWT ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Fact Check: Gingrich on Climate Change; Newt Gingrich went too far when he claimed that "I've never favored cap-and-trade."
Brooks Jackson, December 5, 2011 (FactCheck.org via USA Today)

"…[H]e's never favored the approach taken by Democrats, but he said in 2007 that he would ‘strongly support’ cap-and-trade if combined with ‘a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions.’ …[I]n House testimony in 2009 that he [said he] still might support a cap-and-trade system covering ‘the 2,000 most polluting places,’ if packaged with incentives for nuclear power and ‘green coal,’ among other things.

"…[He] has said there's enough scientific evidence to warrant government action, and has never stood with those conservatives who dismiss evidence of human causation as a hoax.’…But at times he's hedged his stand on the evidence…[saying] the evidence is ‘sufficient’ to warrant acting ‘urgently’ and that there is a ‘wealth of scientific data’ that warming is taking place. But at other times he's said that global warming is ‘probably’ happening and that there's no ‘conclusive’ proof of it, or that humans cause it. He's even suggested that the Earth may be about to move ‘into a long cooling period.’"



"And he's also gone from voicing strong — though conditional — support for a cap-and-trade approach to his current position focused entirely on encouraging development of new technologies, with no mention of capping emissions.

"The former speaker's most recent attempt to explain his evolving position came in a Dec. 3 appearance at a Fox News forum...[but] Gingrich went overboard when he [said] he "never favored cap-and-trade." That's not true. He would have been accurate to say he never favored ‘[Nancy] Pelosi's cap-and-trade…But the truth is that he said in 2007 that he ‘strongly’ supported the concept of a cap-and-trade system to address climate change, if packaged with incentives. He even said the world would be ‘much better off’ if President George W. Bush had not rejected the idea of a mandatory cap on carbon dioxide emissions from electric power plants in 2001, and adopted such a cap-and-trade-plus-incentives package…"