Nikki Haley On Climate Change

I want you to meet Brian McQuide. He's a political science professor from Grimes, who says he's a Republican, who voted for Joe Biden. Professor McQuide. Welcome here to Grandview University. It's an honor to have you here with us. One of the concerns that many of my students express about, and Democrats and Republicans, both sides, is about climate change, our future, environmental issues, which will lead to my question. Environmental issues are really a serious concern here in the Midwest, from the effects of hotter summers on our farmers, to water quality issues, more frequent flooding on the Mississippi. And we're also concerned about the regulatory power of the EPA as well. So what will be your environmental policy, and how can this help the Midwest? The environment's important. And I think that climate change is real. I've always said that. But I think it's important, again, to be honest about where we are. I think you've seen a lot of these Green Deal policies that Biden has put into place that are not actually going to move the ball. They want to suddenly subsidize. They're using gas-produced cars for subsidizing electric vehicles without realizing we don't have the infrastructure to handle it. And I'm not just talking about charging stations. That's one of the issues. I'm not just talking about rural areas. That's one of the issues. I'm talking about electric vehicles are so heavy that our roads and bridges aren't capable of handling that. So all of these things that they're doing in the name of saving the environment are actually going to hurt us down the road, and we need to be honest about that. But if we do care about the environment, which I believe everybody here does, we want clean air. We want clean water. I want my kids to have an Earth that's healthy and going to carry on for future generations. But if we are that serious, then let's be honest. The United States is very good when it comes to emissions. If we want to really fix the environment, then let's start having serious conversations with India and China. They are our polluters. They're the ones that are causing the problem. The reason I pulled us out of the Paris climate agreement was not because I don't want us to have a good environment. It was because what had happened under the Obama administration, they put so many regulations on our businesses that we were suffering, and that was the promise in the Paris climate agreement. You know what China's promise was? That they would deal with it in 10 years. And I dealt with the Chinese enough to know 10 years never comes. We need a fair playing field. We're not the problems. The Chinese and Indians are the problems.