Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas criticized the climate movement Monday night as a type of Trojan horse effort activists started to target the fossil fuel movement while also gaining control over aspects of the government.

Climate change is “the perfect, I believe, pseudoscientific theory because it could never be disproven,” the Texas senator said at a Texas Oil & Gas Association forum. He also chastised his Democratic opponent, Beto O’Rourke, for not being in line with the state’s energy industry.

Cruz, a Republican running for re-election in the first midterm election in the Trump-era, also noted that the environmental movement is predicated on government control over the energy sector.

“The solution for climate change is the same as global cooling and global warming, which is massive government control of the economy, the energy sector and every aspect of our lives,” he said. Cruz also told attendees that the climate movement has made huge gains over the decades.

The fossil fuel industry needs to counteract a “misinformation and propaganda effort,” he said, adding that journalists and celebrities are at the vanguard of the movement. “We’re getting killed — killed — in the culture.”

Cruz added: “The left has those commanding heights and uses it to push the agenda that all of you are bad,” he told the audience. “On the right, look, the best and the brightest, what do they go do? They go make money.”

He has spent several months railing against the use of taxpayer funds on programs devoted to influencing discussion on global warming. Cruz took issue in June with public funds going to the National Science Foundation, for instance.

“We find NSF’s stewardship of the federal taxpayer dollars devoted to the latter project particularly egregious for a number of reasons,” Cruz and colleagues Rand Paul of Kentucky and James Lankford of Oklahoma wrote in a letter to NSF Inspector General Allison Lerner. (RELATED: ‘It’s Unfortunate’: EPA Says Jilted Official Is Spreading Fake News About Her Suspension)

Their letter came after NBC News reported the non-profit group Climate Central “reached more than 500 local TV weathercasters” as part of its “Climate Matters” program that launched in 2012.

The program was backed by two NSF grants totaling more than $4 million that were rewarded in 2009 and 2014, according to federal records. The grants were issued to two universities and Climate Central, a website covering environmental issues.

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