Jeff Miller is a Congressman in Florida (I’ll leave you to guess his party affiliation) who opposes environmental regulations. Why? Because he believes god is in control.

During a “Coffee with the Congressman” event on Tuesday, some of Miller’s constituents confronted him about his position on environmental policy. They said there was a large consensus among scientists about the causes and effects of climate change. In response, Miller said he was willing to defund the Environmental Protection Agency because regulations were hurting job growth. Miller said the Navy only stated climate change was a threat to national security because of President Barack Obama. “I have scientists that I rely on, the scientists that I rely on say our climate has changed,” Miller said. “Look, it wasn’t just a few years ago, what was the problem that existed? It wasn’t global warming, we were gonna all be an ice cube. We’re not ice cubes. Our climate will continue to change because of the way God formed the Earth.”

This makes me facepalm for a couple of reasons. The first is that somebody who has real power is willing to ignore the consensus of scientists to defer to what can’t be more than a couple individuals who confirm what he already thinks he knows. This becomes a problem for everybody living in a place where someone like this has real power. Counting on god and prayer to fix things is a great way to remove the motivation to fix them ourselves, which is kind of the job of Congress.

Second, the consensus of climate scientists is that we’re already going to face global consequences of global warming, the only question now is the degree and how much we can mitigate the severity. I mean, look at some of the things that are already being ruined by global warming. If god is to blame for this, why are we worshiping the guy? If another country had produced the technology that warmed the planet affecting beer, football, chocolate, fireworks, and apple pie, we’d consider it an attack! Forget Afghanistan, we need to march on heaven at once and unseat god.