President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of the Interior said Tuesday that global warming is “not a hoax” but stopped short of saying that humans were the primary cause.
“Climate is changing. That’s indisputable” Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana said in response to a question by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democrat from Vermont. Zinke was addressing the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s hearing determining the Montana Republican’s nomination for secretary of the interior.
“Man has had an influence — I think where there is debate is how much humans effect the climate,” he told Sanders.
Zinke opposes one of the Republican Party’s major planks: transferring public land ownership back to the states. He resigned as a delegate to the Republican National Committee earlier this summer because of the GOP’s position on federal land ownership.
The president-elect campaigned on opening federal land to oil drilling, but, like Zinke, also believes the federal government needs to enter into shared governance with state governments in order to make sure federally controlled lands are regulated more efficiently.
He has had a few altercations with Utah Republican Sen. Rob Bishop, the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, who calls to transfer millions of acres of public land from the U.S. Forest Service to the state. Bishop’s committee oversees the Interior Department.
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