Ex-GOP lawmaker: Republicans rejecting 'true science' on climate change

The Republican Party is “falling away from scientific opinion” on climate change, a former GOP lawmaker said Thursday.

“I believe that my party, the Republican Party, needs to do a much better job of making sure that we are examining the science,” Mike Castle, who served as governor and congressman in Delaware, said at a Washington, D.C., event hosted by Climate Desk.

Castle, who served as Delaware’s at-large representative from 1993 until 2011, added, “It’s been a little bit of an overreaction of rejection of what probably is true science. Maybe it’s not 100 percent science, but it’s true science and indeed the country can advance more if we would pay attention to that.”

Castle said Republicans further removed from coastal regions express more skepticism about climate change, as they are not exposed to rising sea levels.

But this past summer’s record drought, wildfires in the West and record-high temperatures hit many of the regions those lawmakers represent, Castle said. That, combined with superstorm Sandy devastating the densely populated East Coast, might push Republicans to change their minds on climate change, he said.

Castle said those examples “are factors that may start to change some of the thinking of some of the Republicans in the Congress.”

Castle was a casualty of the GOP’s recent rightward shift. He said his support of cap-and-trade legislation in 2009 cost him the 2010 GOP primary in the special Senate election to replace Vice President Biden.

Tea Party-favored Christine O’Donnell won that primary. She then lost to Democrat Chris Coons by more than 16 percentage points.

Labeling himself a centrist Republican, Castle said many current GOP lawmakers use climate science denial as a political crutch.

“It may be that people are for example opposed — people being conservative Republicans — to cap-and-trade because of the cost aspects of it. It’s not just the science of it, but the science is an excuse,” he said.