Democrat
vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris has continued to grill supreme court
nominee Amy Coney Barrett on a range of issues, including climate change and
racial discrimination in the US. Harris pressed Barrett on whether she believed
coronavirus was infectious, smoking caused cancer and climate change was
happening. Barrett avoided answering directly to a number of issues during the
questioning, including one from Democratic senator Cory Booker on whether it
was wrong to separate children from their parents to deter immigrants coming to
the US
Amy Coney Barrett refuses to tell Kamala Harris if she thinks climate change is happening
Supreme court nominee accuses Democratic senator of
soliciting an opinion ‘on a very contentious matter of public debate’
Amy Coney
Barrett pledges ‘open mind’ and plays down conservative record
Associated
Press
Thu 15 Oct
2020 06.03 BST
Supreme
court nominee Amy Coney Barrett refused to say whether she accepts the science
of climate change, under questioning from Kamala Harris, saying she lacked the
expertise to know for sure and calling it a topic too controversial to get
into.
On
Wednesday, Barrett framed acknowledgment of manmade climate change as a matter
of policy, not science, when she was pressed at her confirmation hearing by
Democratic senator from California.
Barrett
said Harris, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee as well as a member of
the Senate judiciary committee, was trying to get her to state an opinion “on a
very contentious matter of public debate, and I will not do that”.
Barrett was
responding to a series of questions from Harris, including whether she thought
coronavirus was infectious, whether smoking caused cancer and whether “climate
change is happening and it’s threatening the air we breathe and the water we
drink”.
The federal
appeals court judge responded that she did think coronavirus was infectious and
smoking caused cancer. She rebuffed Harris on the climate change question, however,
for seeking to “solicit an opinion” on a “matter of public policy, especially
one that is politically controversial”.
The
exchange occurred during the committee’s hearing on Barrett’s nomination to
replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the supreme court.
Scientists
say climate change is a matter of established fact and that the damage is
mostly caused by people burning oil, gas and coal. Climate experts, including
federal scientists in the Trump administration, say increasingly fierce
wildfires, hurricanes and other natural disasters point to the urgency of
global warming.
President
Donald Trump, an ardent booster of the coal, oil and and gas industries,
routinely questions and mocks the science of climate change, while Democratic
rival Joe Biden is proposing a $2tn plan to wean Americans off fossil fuels to
tackle the climate crisis.
The Trump
administration has rolled back major Obama-era efforts to reduce fossil fuel
emissions from cars and trucks and power plants. Many of the administration’s
environmental and public health rollbacks are likely to wind up before the supreme
court.
On Tuesday,
Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican and another member of the
committee considering Barrett’s confirmation, also asked Barrett what she
thought about a series of issues, including climate change.
“I’ve read
about climate change,” Barrett answered.
“And you
have some opinions on climate change that you’ve thought about?” Kennedy asked.
“I’m certainly not a scientist,” Barrett replied, using a frequent refrain of more conservative Republicans on the matter. “I would not say that I have firm views o
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