Once again, Mitt Romney is being accused of flip-flopping. As governor of Massachusetts, and later as a 2008 GOP presidential candidate, the Republican said he believed that man-made pollution was contributing to a planetary warming trend. But on the campaign trail last week, Romney seemed to soften that stance, saying that "we don't know what's causing climate change," and "the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us." Has Romney decided that the scientific consensus on climate change is wrong?
Romney has slowly morphed into a climate-change denier: Many people now say that "Romney has flipped on climate change," says Josh Petri at Talking Points Memo. But he didn't do it overnight. The change over the last several months has been almost imperceptible. Before he hit the campaign trail in earnest, Romney said people were at least partly responsible for climate change. By August, he was sidestepping the issue, saying "he's no scientist." And now, Romney's view is that "we don't know" the cause. As flip-flops go, it's a "very slow" one.
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