HuffPost Reports on Chuck Morse’s Bizarre Climate Answer on WMUR

In a new piece from HuffPost, Chuck Morse — who officially launched his campaign for US Senate on Saturday — gets called out by environmental advocates for trying to hide his “long record as a state lawmaker of opposing carbon-cutting policies” by saying he has done more for “climate change than anyone” because he has planted trees. HuffPost: GOP Senate Hopeful: My Landscaping Means ‘I Do More For Climate Change Than Anyone’ Key Excerpts:

• In a local television interview Sunday, Morse, the president of the New Hampshire state Senate, signaled his opposition to federal efforts to cut planet-heating pollution. He cast those who advocate for emissions cuts from the United States — which has cumulatively added more carbon to the atmosphere than any other country — as elitist hypocrites.

• By contrast, “I do more for climate change than anyone else out there,” said Morse, 61.

• “I mean, I own a nursery and garden center. I’ve been a landscaper,” he said. “I planted more trees than any of the candidates that are running together, you know, at any point in time.”

• Yet Morse, who hopes to take on Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan in November, has routinely voted against measures to cut emissions during the nearly quarter-century he’s spent as a Granite State legislator.

• In 2020, he voted twice against net-metering policies to help provide financial incentives to utility ratepayers who produce their own clean electricity. In 2019, he opposed expanding protections for wetlands, came out against establishing a greenhouse gas rebate program, and voted down a bill to increase the state’s solar-energy targets. In 2011, he voted to withdraw New Hampshire from the regional cap-and-trade market, in which more than a dozen East Coast states set a limit on carbon emissions and allow companies to trade permits to pollute.

• “Senator Morse has a long voting record that contradicts his climate claims,” Catherine Corkery, the director of the Sierra Club’s New Hampshire chapter, said in an email. “He has adamantly opposed clean energy access and expansion. He has avoided addressing the climate crisis and the risks it presents to public health, infrastructure, and the underserved in the Granite State. That is a fact.”

• Morse did not respond to an email sent Monday night requesting comment.

Read the full article at HuffPost.