To the Editor:
I am writing in response to the April 6 op-ed “Inviting Jeb Bush to speak is irresponsible” by Michael Froid ’21, who committed a significant portion of his piece to Bush’s climate change policies. He based his argument that Bush does not hold a legitimate policy opinion about climate change on Bush’s 2011 statement that he does not accept man-made climate change. However, during Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Center for Foreign Relations stated, “Bush acknowledges that human activity has contributed to climate change, but cautions against federal regulatory efforts that he says could stunt growth and raise consumer costs.” This policy position is reiterated in a 2016 The Hill article and a 2015 Bloomberg BNA article. Froid explicitly wrote in his op-ed that this exact policy position “is a legitimate, if controversial, policy opinion.” I agree it is troubling that Bush once denied man-made climate change, and I also recognize that at times during his campaign he continued to waffle on how much of climate change is man-made, but it is irresponsible of Froid to base a large part of his argument against Bush’s invite on a single policy position from seven years ago that Bush has since revised.
Julius Reiner ’19
