In a tweet on April 15, 2023, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene stated that, “If you believe that today’s ‘climate change’ is caused by too much carbon, you have been fooled.” She went on to claim that climate change is “natural” and claimed that the push for clean energy is a “scam.” As Salon reported, Rep. Greene claimed that “We live on a spinning planet that rotates around a much bigger sun along with other planets and heavenly bodies rotating around the sun that all create gravitational pull on one another while our galaxy rotates and travels through the universe. Considering all of that, yes our climate will change, and it's totally normal!” This is, of course, contrary to the proven connection between fossil fuel use and climate change.
To support her opinion that fossil fuels have not contributed to climate change, Rep. Greene shared a graph titled, “Environmental mastery: Increasing fossil fuels while decreasing pollution.” The graph uses emissions data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), showing that ammonia, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, volatile organic compounds, and carbon monoxide emissions have decreased since the 1970s. This graph does not include carbon dioxide or methane – the main emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and the major contributors to global warming – even though the thesis of Rep. Greene’s argument relies on proving that carbon emissions do not cause climate change.