Hickenlooper on Claims Inflation Reduction Act Is ‘Reckless’ Spending: Not Addressing Climate Is More Expensive

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Inside Politics,” Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) responded to claims by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) that the Inflation Reduction Act reconciliation bill is Democrats “using the inflation crisis” to justify “reckless government spending” by stating that the cost of not addressing the climate “far, far, far will outweigh what we’re spending to get clean wind, clean energy, and clean air.”

After hearing Scott’s criticism Hickenlooper responded, “I think Sen. Scott needs only to look down the coast of Florida at the devastation that these more frequent and more intense hurricanes have caused to Florida and all around the Gulf coast and all around the world, the wildfires. I worry that we can’t call it a drought in the southwest anymore because it is so prevalent and it seems to be growing and continuing much longer than a traditional drought. This might be desertification, some people call it aridification. But we’re going to have less water, the cost of that, to not address that, is the type definition of insanity. The cost of not addressing it now, far, far, far will outweigh what we’re spending to get clean wind, clean energy, and clean air.”

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