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Yes, but the old Progressive Conservative governments’ programs — including experiments in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) — largely gave lip service to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

CCS involves capturing carbon dioxide from an industrial smokestack and injecting it underground. CCS experiments have already eaten up more than $1 billion of Alberta taxpayers’ money with limited results.

‘Argue for a different response’

Kenney said he had an “open mind” to supporting more work on CCS, but wasn’t making any commitments.

As for an overall approach, Kenney pointed to “people like Prof. Bjorn Lomborg who do not challenge the consensus about the causes, but argue for a different response.”

Lomborg is a Danish political scientist, not a climate scientist, who argues there are greater threats than climate change, such as diseases and malnutrition, facing humanity. Lomborg says climate change is an important issue, but that governments are mistakenly spending massive amounts of money on efforts that will have little effect on global warming.

Climate scientists and others have criticized his conclusions, but Lomborg has gained a following, especially among those looking for an argument against taking significant action on climate change.

You have to wonder if Kenney is one of them.

When asked about his MLAs’ past comments downplaying or dismissing the reality of man-made climate change, Kenney said: “I think there’s a legitimate range of perspectives about exactly to what degree anthropogenic causes are behind climate change and more importantly what the solutions are.”

But there’s not a “legitimate range of perspectives” on human causes unless that range is “pretty much all” or “just about all.”

Kenney might want to do some more reading that includes climate experts. Or just take a peek at NASA’s web page: “Most climate scientists agree the main cause of the current global warming trend is human expansion of the ‘greenhouse effect.'”

Kenney is great with a quip on the carbon tax.

We have yet to see if he’s great with a policy on climate change.

gthomson@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/graham_journal