Texas Sen. John Cornyn calls climate change advocacy a ‘cult’

In a departure from his typically measured rhetoric on energy and climate policy, Sen. John Cornyn derided concern about climate change as a “cult” during an energy summit in East Texas. “It’s pure fantasy. … This is part of the cult, or religion, of renewable energy,” Cornyn told a group of oil and gas executives Thursday in Tyler. “This is just the Green New Deal wearing other clothes.” The senator was responding to a question about whether he agreed with a sweeping Biden administration plan to transition the energy sector to 100% emissions-free electricity by 2035. Referring to climate change advocates as a cult is an unusual move for Cornyn, a reliable booster of Texas’ fossil fuel industries who, unlike Sen. Ted Cruz, has not overtly denied that potentially catastrophic changes are underway in the climate largely because of human activity.

By contrast, Cruz has not shied from such inflammatory rhetoric. He has gone out of his way to defend climate change deniers and attack environmentalists and others who accept the scientific consensus that industrial activity and energy production have put billions of people at risk of flooding, wildfire, drought and unusually harsh storms. In a 2015 interview with Glenn Beck, Cruz said scientists must approach global warming with skepticism. “Climate change isn’t science, it’s religion,” Cruz said in the interview. “Look at the language, where they call you a denier. Denier is not the language of science.” Cornyn echoed some of that language as the keynote speaker at the Tyler Area Chamber of Commerce Energy Summit, where people in the audience audibly scoffed at the idea of moving away from fossil fuels. “Obviously, we are taking what is a great national asset and jeopardizing that by taxing it into oblivion,” Cornyn said. “But this is not part of the narrative in D.C. This industry does its job so well, people take it for granted.” Cornyn’s official stance on energy and climate change, according to his website, is to encourage conservation while “increasing the responsible production of our domestic sources of fossil fuels and exploring alternative sources to make our nation more energy-secure.”