Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Scott Walker Slam Jerry Brown over Drought

California Gov. Jerry Brown is not running for president–yet, anyway–but he came under fire from three Republican presidential candidates in Nevada on Saturday, as they slammed him for his policies on California’s drought, and for linking it to climate change.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, which has just begun to recover from a extreme drought, said that “global warming alarmists” were “just interested politically in more power over the economy and our lives,” according to a report by David Siders of the Sacramento Bee.

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin also pointed to environmentalists’ objections to building dams to store water: “I think radical environmental policies that stop things like dams from going in so that water..can be used effectively is something we should be talking about.

Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who hails from California, told the Sacramento Bee that even if climate change was involved, “California has had droughts for millennia….And so knowing that, you would think that you would prepare for droughts by building reservoirs and water conveyance systems so that you could save the rainwater during years when there’s a lot of rain.”

Construction of water storage facilities has slowed dramatically in California over the past several decades, and there have been no new large dams or reservoirs built since the late 1970s.

Though public opinion polls show that Californians, like their governor, blame climate change for the drought, the federal government’s own scientists have concluded that natural variability, not climate change, is the actual cause.