Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX, 21) represents a gerrymandered district where both income and education are about 20% higher than Texas state averages. Elected in 2018, he is known for his attempt to block the $19.1 billion disaster relief bill providing aid for devastated communities in Texas and Puerto Rico after hurricanes Harvey and Maria, storms which owed their increased intensity to climate change.
Chip Roy on Climate Climate Change
In the San Antonio Express he refers to: “the hysteria around climate change” and said there is an abundance of “misinformation out there about the extent of man’s impact on temperatures on the Earth.”
“I don’t know,” Roy said when asked if he believes there’s any link between human activity and climate change. “What I know is that our lives are made so immeasurably better by the availability of affordable, abundant energy.”
In the same article he goes on to say that, “Of course there is climate change going on,” Roy said. “There has been since the beginning of time. But as the climate has changed, the question is how can humans adapt to it? Energy is the very thing that allows us to adapt to it, to be able to have climate-controlled places in which to live and operate.”
Chip Roy and Friends
President Donald Trump, a climate change denier
Scott Pruitt, former head of the EPA, a climate change denier
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)—Roy was Cruz’s chief of staff during the government shutdown in 2013
Current Secretary of Energy and former Texas Governor Rick Perry
Former congressman Lamar Smith, a climate change denier
Chip Roy’s Background
Vice President of Strategy for the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF)
Director for the Center for Tenth Amendment Action at the TPPF
Investment banking analyst for NationsBanc Capital Markets
Counsel in the Oil & Gas industry
See also: Rep. Steve Chabot and Rep. Jody Hice
Climate of Denial