Group Criticizes Clinton’s Reliance on ‘Junk Science’

Commenting on President Clinton’s remarks concerning global warming at the United Nations today, Paul Beckner, president of Citizens for a Sound Economy said, “Before the world stage, President Clinton announced his intentions to spend billions of Americans’ dollars on unproven environmental policies.” Beckner characterized the so-called global warming theory as “junk science.”

The president’s speech in New York follows his decision on Wednesday to implement the Environmental Protection Agency’s controversial new clean air standards.

The decision to tighten restrictions on ozone and airborne particulate matter was a mistake, according to Beckner. “In making his decision, the president fell for faulty science, turned a deaf ear to thousands of local and state officials, and ignored a majority of voices within his own administration who question the need for these standards,” he said. Clinton may have also been responding to pressure from European leaders to implement sweeping environmental restrictions, he said. “In his eagerness to appease other nations, the president has elected to impose costly and stringent standards on the American people,” he added.

Clinton’s concessions on the EPA’s clean air standards may have bought him maneuvering room on global warming policy, Beckner said. “So far the president has resisted the European Union’s call for specific time tables and targets on emissions. We hope that he will continue to resist and will not saddle Americans with a new set of costly regulations aimed at a problem which may not exist,” he said.

At Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation luncheon today in Boston, a climatology expert challenged many popularly-held perceptions surrounding global warming. Dr. Robert C. Balling, director of the Arizona State University office of climatology said that records from satellites and airborne balloons actually indicate that global temperatures have cooled during the past two decades, despite the increase in greenhouse gases.

Citizens for a Sound Economy is a 250,000-member free-market advocacy organization