Lindsey Graham: Climate change is real — ‘the problem is Al Gore’

Unlike many of his colleagues, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) thinks climate change is real. But, speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations event on Monday, the Republican senator accused former Vice President Al Gore of turning climate change into a “religious” problem.

“When it comes to climate change being real, people in my party are all over the board,” he said. “I did the trifecta: I said that it’s real, that man is contributing to it in a substantial way — but the problem is Al Gore has turned this thing into a religion.”


“Climate change is not a religious problem for me, it is an economic problem, it is an environmental problem,” Graham said. “So I think the Republican Party has to do some soul searching. Before we can be bipartisan, we have to figure out where we are as a party. What is the environmental platform of the Republican Party? I don’t know either.”

“So I’d like to come up with one, I’d like to have a debate within the party. ‘Can you say that climate change is a scientifically sound phenomenon, but can you reject the idea you have to destroy the economy to solve the problem?’ is sort of where I’ll be taking this debate.”