Deroy Murdock: Romney runs hot and cold on global warming

Willard Mitt Romney these days could not be more explicit about abandoning President Barack Obama's carbon-dioxide restrictions.

“Irresponsibly,” Romney wrote in an Aug. 28 op-ed for the Foster's Daily Democrat in New Hampshire, “the EPA declared carbon dioxide, the same carbon dioxide that humans exhale, to be a ‘pollutant' that poses risks to human health.” He also observed: “Congress had the good sense not to compound our economic challenges by imposing cap-and-trade's extraordinary costs on the American people.”

Romney's website offers this carbon-friendly promise: “Mitt Romney will eliminate the regulations promulgated in pursuit of the Obama administration's costly and ineffective anti-carbon agenda.”

Well — surprise, surprise! Unlike this conservative aria, Romney sang a totally different tune as Massachusetts' liberal-Republican governor.

A recently exposed, online dossier from the 2008 John McCain campaign offers 200 pages of Romney's self-contradictions, vacillations, and head scratchers. His views on so-called “global warming” are just the tip of this non-melting iceberg of confusion.

McCain's database includes Ryan Sager's April 20, 2007, New York Sun story in which Romney embraces a 1940s fuel source. “Liquefied coal, gosh,” Romney said. “Hitler during the Second World War – I guess because he was concerned about losing his oil – liquefied coal. That technology is still there.”

Less bizarre, according March 25, 2007's Los Angeles Times, Romney told religious leaders in 2003 that he was “terrified” about “warming” and found it “quite alarming.”

From one RINO to another, Romney wrote then-Governor George Elmer Pataki (Republican in Name Only – New York) in July 2003. “Now is the time to take action toward climate protection,” Romney declared. He advocated a “regional cap and trade system” for both states.

In 2004, Romney launched the Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan, “a coordinated statewide response to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the climate,” as his office described it.

Romney's Dec. 7, 2005, press release announced that “strict state limitations on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants take effect on Jan. 1, 2006.”

“These carbon emission limits will provide real and immediate progress in the battle to improve our environment,” Romney said. This red tape, the communiqué noted, is designed to lower emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and mercury from power plant smokestacks.” Furthermore, the experts whom Romney consulted “include John Holden [sic]…at Harvard University.”

“Romney (or his staff) was misled by John ‘Holden' [sic], a rabid environmentalist and collaborator of the notorious Paul Ehrlich. John Holdren is now Obama's science adviser,” says Dr. S. Fred Singer, Ph.D., a University of Virginia professor emeritus of physics and environmental science and the U.S. Weather Satellite Service's founding director. “They consider CO2 a pollutant and mention it along with sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury — all real pollutants, injurious to human health. Clearly, they had no clue about the science.”

“No one would choose such a green course, enlist such advisors, and then suddenly reverse himself,” the Cato Institute's Dr. Patrick Michaels, Ph.D., tells me. “As president, Romney will revert to his more familiar green self.”

“Romney's press release should be compared to more recent statements in which he has changed his views on climate change,” suggests the Reason Foundation's Julian Morris. “The optimistic conclusion would be that he changes his mind in response to better evidence. The pessimistic conclusion would be that he changes his mind in response to the advice of pollsters.”

Americans who thirst for leadership driven by principles rather than polls should go see The Iron Lady. Meryl Streep, the finest actress in recorded history, masterfully portrays former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Her Majesty's head of government dominates the United Kingdom, steady in her conservative convictions and convincing as she communicates them. As America drifts among the waves like a faded champagne cork, these memories of Thatcher's rule trigger goose bumps.

America now ponders someone who is flexible on virtually everything — even the air we breathe. Clearly no Iron Lady, Romney is the Man of Foil.