New House Speaker Mike Johnson Holds Extreme Views on Climate Change and Science
Louisiana legislators and progressive activists warn that Johnson’s polite demeanor masks dangerous ideas
Sierra Club
By Delaney Nolan
October 30, 2023
… John Delgado, a former Baton Rouge Metro council member who was critical of Johnson when he was still a state representative, said Johnson’s climate skepticism is borne out of evangelical “dispensationalist belief”—the idea that the end times herald the second coming of Christ. “There are people who just want to see the world burn because they are waiting for the next one,” Delgado told Sierra. He explained that those who are eager for the Rapture “want it [the world] to end sooner.... And so they’re not going to care about the environment, they’re not going to care about the coastline, they’re not going to care about rising ocean temperatures.”
“When you talk about climate change,” Delgado said, “he [Johnson] truly doesn’t care.”
… Johnson was chairing the Republican Study Committee when it claimed that wind turbines cause “headaches, anxiety, depression, and cognitive dysfunction.” That claim is apparently based on commentary written not by scientists but by a Canadian family physician, along with a retired pharmacist and an accountant.
… Jackson Voss, a Louisiana native and former policy advocate in DC, encountered Johnson’s staff during his time as a legislative staffer. Voss, now a policy coordinator at the Alliance for Affordable Energy, described Johnson’s views “as being anti-science” on issues ranging from climate change to reproductive and mental health. Voss also echoed Delgado’s impression of Johnson, that his positions are influenced less by politics than by a deep conviction in Christian fundamentalism. “His convictions are extreme,” said Voss, “but they’re sincerely held.”
Johnson, who has advocated for public schools to teach the Bible as an “accurate record of history,” is opposed to reproductive rights and LGBTQIA equality…Justin Solet, a long-time environmental justice organizer from Louisiana…described Johnson as “a zealot” and says if Johnson’s vision were realized in Louisiana, “we would turn into Gilead,” a reference to the fascist ethnostate in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
More here
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/new-house-speaker-mike-johnson-holds-extreme-views-climate-change-and-science