How Speaker Ryan Reconciles EPA Rollbacks with New UN Report

At a private National Press Club press conference broadcasted on C-SPAN on Monday, October 8th, I asked Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, how he was able to reconcile his party’s EPA rollbacks with the recent UN report stating that catastrophic impacts of a warming planet could be felt by 2030. The speaker responded primarily with the need for better investment in technology, as well as the need for developing countries like India and China to dramatically improve upon their polluting.

He proudly noted the recently passed FAA Reauthorization Bill included modernizing America’s financing system that included helping developing countries finance their infrastructure (e.g., power). This primarily “counter-China strategy” could then also help countries convert to cleaner based energy sources, indirectly combating pollution.

The Speaker stated the U.S., as a developed country, is “as clean as it gets.” This could be interpreted in a variety of ways, but let’s just be clear: the U.S. is the biggest carbon polluter in history.

I didn’t expect an informed answer from the Speaker when I asked this question, but I also didn’t expect blatant inaccuracies. It’s okay to not know the state of science and technology, and it’s also okay to not grasp the magnitude of the global crisis. We can’t expect our policymakers to be innovation experts or to transcend their cognitive limitations. As a risk and behavioral scientist, I’m all too familiar with how humans systematically under react to risks that deserve our attention as well as the vice versa. But it is NOT okay to attenuate the immensity of the risk we are facing when speaking from a position of significant consequence to the lives of millions.

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