Malcolm Gilbert with the Montana Environmental Information Center echoed those concerns, telling the committee that a situation “where we won’t have control over our rules and our regulations won’t sit well with your constituents.”

Speakers from the Northern Plains Resource Council, the Montana Audubon Society, Montana Conservation Voters and the Montana Public Interest Research Group also spoke in opposition.

The only two proponents were Bigfork resident Ed Berry and his wife Valerie. Berry told the committee that a “simple physics model,” based on the presence of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere debunked human causation of climate change; Read’s bill heavily references that model.

During a lengthy question-and-answer session that followed, committee members Marilyn Marler, D-Missoula, and Rob Farris-Olsen, D-Helena, respectively pressed Berry on the sources of the information for the study, and whether he had published a peer-reviewed article about this topic. Berry referred them to data and a “preprint” of an article on his personal website.

While Read's stance is at odds with the scientific consensus, he remained committed to it in his closing remarks. “The climate is changing, I’m just saying CO2 is not the culprit.”

He surmised that in reality, efforts to reduce carbon emissions are ”a war against coal when you look at it, it’s a war against petrochemical fuels. It suits their ultimate goal so that’s why I brought this bill.”

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