June 13, 2012 05:40 PM UTC

Oh, You Mean THAT Mitt Romney?

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Los Angeles Times reports today:

During his first 18 months as governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney spent considerable time hammering out a sweeping climate change plan to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

As staff briefed him on possible measures and environmentalists pressed him to act, Romney frequently repeated a central thought, people at those meetings said: That climate change is occurring, that the United States has the resources to handle its vast impact but that low-lying poor countries like Bangladesh would suffer greatly…

Indeed, one of Romney’s top environmental staffers, Gina McCarthy, now runs the air pollution unit of the Environmental Protection Agency under Obama. John Holdren, a scientist Romney turned to on at least one occasion to discuss climate change, is the White House senior advisor on science and technology issues.

Romney’s gubernatorial record on energy and the environment has little in common with the positions he has staked out in the presidential race, those who knew him in Massachusetts say. The presumptive Republican nominee expresses doubts about climate science like the majority of his party, and his official website has no mention of environmental policy, except for reining in the Clean Air Act and the EPA…

This newest “Old Mitt Romney” revelation, needless to say, is a serious problem for a campaign that has focused unusual time and resources–especially here in Colorado–on attacking President Barack Obama’s energy policies. Does Romney believe what he said as governor of Massachusetts? Or does he believe what he says now in the energy-producing regions of Colorado, not to mention the long GOP primary, about the origin of climate change?

My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet and the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try and reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.

Which Romney will you get as President? Nobody knows. Romney would do much better to hold a consistent position, even one with which many will disagree, than to be trusted by no one.

But we’re kind of past that, aren’t we?