On stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in mid-September, two-plus hours into the second GOP presidential debate, the candidates were shifting under the glare of the klieg lights as moderator Jake Tapper began grilling Senator Marco Rubio about one of the Republicans’ least favorite topics: climate change. When evidence mounted in the 1980s that the ozone layer was shrinking, the CNN anchor noted, “Ronald Reagan urged skeptics in industry to come up with a plan … and his approach worked.” So why not “approach climate change the Reagan way?”

It was fitting that Rubio, who is working harder than any candidate to present himself as the party’s face of the future, was the one who had to field the question. Forward-thinking people, as the senator from Florida knows very well, do not deny science. But at the same time, as Rubio also knows, Republicans in search of conservative votes have long felt compelled to do just that.

So he glared down at Tapper and attempted a dodge, firing back: “Because we’re not going to destroy our economy the way the left-wing government that we are under now wants to do.” Rubio, clearly well-drilled to answer the question, went on: “We are not going to make America a harder place to create jobs in order to pursue policies that will do absolutely nothing, nothing to change our climate, to change our weather.”

And why are these climate policies doomed to fail? Because, Rubio said, “America is not a planet.” What he meant is that America acting alone is futile without action from other countries, particularly China. And China, of course, would never act. “They’re drilling a hole and digging anywhere in the world that they can get a hold of,” Rubio opined. Chris Christie, Tapper’s next target, eagerly agreed, dismissing the idea that we can fix the problem “by ourselves” as a “wild left-wing idea.” Other GOP candidates had previously said much the same in other settings. “Look at China, they’re doing nothing,” Donald Trump proclaimed in September on Morning Joe, adding his well-considered scientific assessment that America’s efforts are doomed because “it’s a big planet.”

As it happens, a few months earlier, China had announced an ambitious new plan to limit its carbon emissions—a development that had been widely covered by major news outlets across the country. But among those on the debate stage, it was an article of faith this announcement from China couldn’t possibly have any meaning—if, that is, it had really happened at all.