Huntsman’s Exit Leaves GOP Climate Moderates Adrift

Despite some wavering near the end of his distressed campaign, Jon Huntsman Jr. represented the most rational voice on climate science and policy in the GOP primaries. His exit leaves a field of climate-denying candidates that has openly questioned the harm of carbon pollution and threatens to reverse gains in clean air and public health by lifting industry regulations. “The minute that the Republican Party becomes the anti-science party, we have a huge problem,” Huntsman said in August appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” “We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012.” Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul all have accused scientists of cooking up the fact of man-made climate change from the burning of fossil fuels.