Carly Fiorina attempted to thread the GOP needle on climate change, avoiding an outright denial of the science but refraining from expressing her own opinions in an interview with Katie Couric.
Her main talking point was that we need innovation, not regulation, but she neglected to explain how to encourage that innovation. When pressed on whether or not she considered climate change a problem, Fiorina downplayed it and pointed to other issues, evasively bringing up Obama and ISIS rather than responding to the climate question with a simple "yes" or "no."
Fiorina also argued that one country acting alone will not solve the problem,saying that the US should go ahead and develop clean coal, because if it doesn't, China will. This argument ignores the fact that the US and China came to an agreement on climate last year, where it was made clear that China isready to move to a clean energy economy. In fact, they're already testing carbon markets regionally, with the aim to start implementing a national system in 2017.
While the interview didn't produce any bombshell quotes, it demonstrated the struggle among the GOP to take a sensible position on climate. Perhaps it's time the candidates start listening to sensible Republican voices, like former SC congressman Bob Inglis, who provides a very compelling conservative argumentfor pricing carbon and returning the collected money to taxpayers. The 2.8 million jobs that would be created through such a free-market policy would, to Fiorina's talking point, drive innovation in clean energy.
Talking about innovation is nice, but you need an actual policy to get to anything more than talk.
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