Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) was sworn into the U.S. Senate in 2015 after previously serving long terms as both a state senator and governor of South Dakota. In the Senate, he serves on the Committee on Armed Services, the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, the Committee on Environment and Public Works, and the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
Mike Rounds and Climate Change
In 2006, during his time as governor, Mike Rounds joined a group of western state governors to take action against rising global temperatures. Together, this bipartisan group passed a resolution calling on western states to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. About the resolution, Rounds stated that “one of the things we agree on is there are a number of different causes that we recognize, and the scientists recognize, are the cause of global warming,” and when he was asked if that includes humans, he said “Absolutely”.
However, as Senator, Mike Rounds has moved away from an agenda that put the environment as a priority. In June of 2017, Rounds was one of the 22 Republican senators who wrote a strongly worded letter to President Donald Trump urging him to carry out the decision to leave the Paris Agreement, citing that it as a threat to Trump’s plan to rescind the Clean Power Plan. In response to Trump officially leaving the Agreement, Rounds stated that “while climate change is real and the United States has a responsibility to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, the administration needs to be conscious of the financial hit the country could take if it is held to different standards than other nations… I don’t think there’s anyone that disputes that climate change is occurring, I would have no objection to looking at an agreement to protect the environment that would not damage our economic base that basically has to be strong enough for us to do the things that we have to do in order to protect the environment.” Shortly afterwards in 2018, Mike Rounds cosponsored a bill that limits the EPA’s use of certain sciences for rulemaking, stating that it “erodes public trust” if non-public data is utilized.
Rounds’ lifetime score on his League of Conservation Scorecard is 6%, which shows the low rate at which he has approved of environmental legislation during his time in public office. He is running for reelection to the U.S. Senate in 2020.
Mike Rounds and Friends
Throughout his career, Mike Rounds has received nearly $300,000 in campaign contributions from the oil & gas industry, most coming during his recent Senatorial election cycles.
See Also
Sen. James Infoe
Sen. Joni Ernst
Climate of Denial