Department of Energy head Rick Perry said Monday that carbon emissions are not the primary driving force behind man-made climate change.
Natural variability is likely the cause for most global warming, Perry told reporters. He was responding to questions about whether carbon emissions are causing the Earth’s temperature to increase.
“This shouldn’t be a debate about is the climate changing, is man having an affect on it? Yeah, we are,” he said. “The question should be, just how much and what are the policy changes that we need to make to affect that?”
Perry’s remarks Monday were not that much different than those he made during his confirmation hearings earlier this year. He said at the time that “the climate is changing” but that he believes “some of it is naturally occurring, but some of it is also caused by manmade activity.”
DOE’s decision to nix one of its foreign climate office could be one of the reasons why reporters have ratcheted up questions about Perry’s environmental positions.
Perry’s agency released more than a dozen employees at the Office of International Climate and Technology, which was opened in 2010 to help allies across the world kick-start technology reducing greenhouse gasses.
Employees in the office are part of the so-called Clean Energy Ministerial, a small collective of polluting nations such as China and India. Their sole focus was to develop technology fighting man-made climate change.
The department is “looking for ways to consolidate the many duplicative programs that currently exist within DOE,” a spokesman for the agency told reporters, adding that the Office of International Climate and Technology would close as well.
Another agency official said that the move was made because the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) already has an international affairs team. The New York Times claimed the move was an example of President Donald Trump’s insistence on rolling back clean energy programs.
Perry also believes it is unfair to label climate change skeptics as cave dwellers.
“This idea that the science is absolutely settled and if you don’t believe it’s settled, then you are somehow another Neanderthal, that is so inappropriate from my perspective,” he said. “If you’re going to be a wise, intellectually engaged person, being a skeptic about some of these issue is quite alright.”
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