Bill Nye sought to burn any would-be presidents in an Earth Day interview in which he panned all three Republican presidential candidates for being “in denial about climate change.”
“There’s still a very strong contingent of people who are in denial about climate change,” Nye said in an interview with CNN published Friday. “And if you don’t believe me, look at the the three people currently running for president of the world’s most influential country who are … climate change deniers.”
The science educator was referring to billionaire businessman Donald Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
While Kasich says he believes humans contribute to climate change and supports renewable energy, he also opposes ending energy consumption from fossil fuels so long as it’s burned in a clean manner. “We don’t know how much humans actually contribute,” he said in a recent debate. Back in 2012, Kasich said the Environmental Protection Agency should not regulate emissions.
Both Cruz and Trump dispute climate change, which contrasts with what most scientists believe. They blame carbon emissions, largely from burning fossil fuels, for driving manmade climate change.
“Climate change is not a science. It’s a religion,” Cruz said last year. Meanwhile back in 2012, Trump tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
Nye considers this sort of comment a product of “lazy-thinking.”
“If only there were 60 people we could just track down who are responsible for everything being screwed up that would be great, but that’s not how it is,” said the former star of the 1990s science show “Bill Nye the Science Guy” and current CEO of the Planetary Society. “The world’s getting warmer because there’s 7.3 billion people tying to live the way we live in the developed world … by continuing to burn fossil fuels.”
