Despite new warnings about the severity of the climate crisis, Republican gubernatorial candidate Shawn Moody’s position has shifted throughout his campaign, prompting critics to declare his untrustworthiness on this matter a threat to the future of the state.
During a GOP primary debate in early June, the four candidates were asked: “Do you believe human activities are currently changing the climate of Maine’s land and waters?”
Moody was the last to reply in the quick-fire round. “It’s mostly…” He paused, motioning with his hands as if searching for a better answer, and then said bluntly, “It’s no.” Moody shook his head as the audience laughed at his momentary struggle for the right response.
Since then, Moody’s position has expanded without fundamentally changing. Most recently, during another televised gubernatorial forum on Oct. 17, the auto repair entrepreneur suggested the environmental phenomenon has been occurring since the days when the Earth’s land mass comprised a global supercontinent.
“Obviously human activity adds, or contributes, to climate change, but the climate has been changing since the world was created,” Moody said. “You look at [how] the continents were breaking off and drifting. There was an ice cap hundreds of feet thick, and all that. So the climate’s been changing.”
Pointing out that the state Department of Environmental Protection recognized his auto body business as an “environmental leader,” Moody urged Mainers to “set your own voluntary targets, how you’re going to reduce your own carbon emissions at your local communities, businesses, municipalities, nonprofits.”
Yet his Democratic rival, state Attorney General Janet Mills, was quick to jump on Moody’s geologic view of global weather patterns.
“The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was not talking about continents separating apart millions of years ago. They’re talking about the increase in temperature right now and over the next 30 years,” Mills said. “The fact that the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, the fact that we’ve already had a crash of the cod fisheries, the shrimp fisheries, herring fisheries, and the lobsters, yes, are moving north and east.”
The alarming Oct. 6 report from the UN IPCC referenced by Mills found there are roughly a dozen years before global warming exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, beyond which we are likely to experience weather extremes, including severe drought, floods, and extreme heat, bringing famine and poverty to hundreds of millions of people. The report concluded that avoiding this fate “would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities.”
Additionally, since 2004, the Gulf of Maine has already been found to have “warmed faster than anyplace else on the planet, except for an area northeast of Japan,” according to a 2015 special report by the Portland Press Herald.
Despite these predictions, Moody has dismissed the more dire warnings as an overreaction and cautioned against government intervention. At an Oct. 4 candidate forum in Rockland focused on the seafood industry, Moody conceded there are notable scientific findings on climate change, but claimed the public should not become inflamed by the evidence.
“I think we need to have people on the ground. We have to listen to scientific data and research. We can’t overreact,” Moody said.
“I believe that the industry itself will navigate the channels,” Moody continued. “We’ve just got to make sure that government doesn’t impede that forward progress so that adaptability, if you will, as this takes place over the next two to five years.”
Following the seafood forum, Maine Democratic Party chairman Phil Bartlett issued a statement condemning Moody’s lukewarm response to the climate crisis.
“Telling Mainers – especially our fisherman – not to overreact to an issue that will significantly affect their livelihoods just shows how out of touch Shawn Moody is,” Bartlett said. “How can Maine people rely on Shawn Moody to address this serious issue when he won’t even acknowledge the scientific facts behind it?”
On occasion, Moody has underscored the potential economic opportunities of the renewable energy industry. Though his campaign website does not mention climate change, his issues page states, “We must have a strong economy while minimizing our impact on the environment. We cannot sacrifice one at the expense of the other.”
Similarly, during the Oct. 17 debate at the University of Maine in Augusta, Moody noted, “there’s a lot of pent-up investment and excitement around renewables.”
“You’re going to see a lot of investment coming into Maine, jobs, and boost our already growing economy around renewable energy,” he said. “It will lower our carbon footprint.”
When asked his view on Moody’s various positions on climate change, Bartlett said that it is a sign of general untrustworthiness.
“In the Republican primary, Shawn Moody denied human activity was causing climate change, but now, in the general election, he admits it’s a factor,” Bartlett wrote in an email. “Mainers just can’t trust what Shawn Moody has to say, and it’s become clear that with LePage’s campaign team at the helm, he’ll say just about anything to get elected. We don’t need a governor who has a change of heart when the polls don’t look good. We need someone who is truly committed to fighting climate change and protecting our natural resources.”
Maureen Drouin, executive director of Maine Conservation Voters, also expressed concern, saying Moody’s “waffling just shows that Maine people can’t trust him to address the threat climate change poses to our state’s fisheries, economy and public health.”
“Climate change is putting our state and economy at risk,” Drouin continued. “Shawn Moody’s refusal to accept climate science would put Maine on a dangerous course…He simply can’t be trusted on this critical issue.”
During a June primary debate, Republican gubernatorial candidates Rep. Ken Fredette, Sen. Garrett Mason, and former commissioner of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services Mary Mayhew look on as Shawn Moody shares his views on climate change.
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