J.D. Vance Is an Oil Booster and Doubter of Human-Caused Climate Change

Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio, is a strong supporter of the oil and gas industry, opposes solar power and electric vehicles, and has said climate change is not a threat.

It wasn’t always that way.

Mr. Vance, a fierce critic of Mr. Trump before becoming one of his most loyal MAGA supporters, also appears to have undergone an evolution on the issue of climate change. As recently as 2020, Mr. Vance said in a speech at Ohio State University that “we have a climate problem in our society.” He praised solar energy and he called natural gas an improvement over dirtier forms of energy, but not “the sort of thing that’s gonna take us to a clean energy future.”

Fast forward to 2022. As Mr. Vance sought Mr. Trump’s endorsement for his bid for the Senate, his positions on climate change took a sharp turn.

“I’m skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man,” Mr. Vance told the American Leadership Forum that year.

He acknowledged that the climate was changing but said that humans had no role in the changes. “It’s been changing, as others pointed out, it’s been changing for millennia,” Mr. Vance said.

(Scientists have conclusively determined that human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, is the dominant reason the planet is at its warmest in recorded history.)