George Schultz was secretary of state in the Reagan administration for seven years. He has been a part of the Republican establishment in American politics since the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s. In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Eleanor Hall, Schultz has come out with a clear acknowledgement that human-caused climate change is real:
The facts are that a new ocean is being created in the arctic, and the cover over Greenland is melting. So those are facts, they’re not scientific opinions, they’re not conjectures, they’re facts.
And they’re happening because the globe is warming, that’s a fact. The question is why is that, and I think the ideas that have been put forward that greenhouse gases and what that does are very persuasively a strong part of this.
I’m not enough of a scientist to say but I’ve listened to a lot of people and thought about it a lot and it seems to me that we should recognise that this is a potential problem of great seriousness and we need to be paying attention.
The magnitude of the climate change predicament means we must reach out across conventional political divides. We must all — including self-identified ‘skeptics’ — get beyond fear driven by ideological defensiveness. It is heartening that George Schultz has the insight and courage to speak out.
Full interview at http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3606689.htm
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