Thursday on CNN, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said the reactions on the left to President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change were “alarmist” and “ridiculous.”

Paul said, “We should try to constrain pollution. We should try to control pollution. I think we’ve been doing that for 50 or 60 years. And I think we should continue. But your previous guest sounded like, my goodness, the sky is falling, mass extinction. Really? I don’t think we should be alarmists about this. The planet is 4.5 billion years old. We have gone through great extremes of climate change natural and now we may have man-made influence as well.”

“But these people, the question I always ask the alarmists is how much is nature and how much is man?” he continued. “They act as if it’s a given that man is the only source of climate change. My goodness, the great climate changes in our history happened before the industrial revolution. So is there climate change could man have an impact? Yes, but let’s not be such alarmists that if we don’t sign the Paris accord that there’s going to be mass extinction? That’s a ridiculous statement.”

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