Safe Climate Campaign

By Darren Samuelsohn

...“He definitely played a very nefarious role and ignored the science, which an intelligent person shouldn’t do,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign and a former head of the Sierra Club’s global warming program. “But the question now is: Fifteen years later, what does he think and what would he do as Obama’s secretary of defense?”

...Becker credited Hagel for agreeing to meet with him in the early 2000s to discuss global warming, but the environmentalist said the message didn’t get through. “He was saying things that were just untrue. He was very charming and looked me in the eye and said, ‘I’ll look into it,’ but didn’t change his view that global warming was a crock of shit,” Becker said.