| President-elect Donald Trump has called on a parade of loyalists to fill his Cabinet — but former Rep. Matt Gaetz and Fox News personality Pete Hegseth have prompted the most Capitol Hill hand wringing. In other words, people are kind of losing it. The two picks, if confirmed by the Senate, would be charged with leading the Justice and Defense Departments, respectively, where they would wield immense power — including determining how the nation’s military and courts respond to climate change. So what do they think about the state of the planet? Let’s start with Hegseth: While the Army veteran and conservative commentator has little defense experience and has never run an organization larger than a small nonprofit, he does have a long history distorting and denying climate research, writes Scott Waldman. Hegseth has described climate research as a vast left-wing conspiracy to impose government controls on American society. It’s liberals’ way to “play God,” he said. If Hegseth’s comments translate into downplaying the role of climate science at the Pentagon, it could be bad news for the nation’s defense system, analysts say. The Defense Department has long used climate research in its planning and threat assessments, helping the military identify national security risks, protect troops from extreme heat, plan for more intense storms and prepare for harsher combat situations. Then there’s Gaetz: Unlike Hegseth's stance, the Florida Republican’s record on climate doesn’t exactly toe the Trumpian climate-change-is-a-hoax line — though he’s long been a loyal supporter. And his path to attorney general was likewise chaotic, given the scrutiny he’s faced amid an Ethics Committee probe into allegations he had sex with a minor (which he’s denied). Gaetz has said repeatedly that climate change is real and driven by human activity. There “is a scientific consensus that the Earth is getting warmer. There is a moral consensus that we should do something about it,” he wrote in a 2020 autobiography. "And I think history will judge very harshly those who are climate deniers," he told me in 2017. But Gaetz has also introduced legislation to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, voiced opposition to climate rules and called the Green New Deal resolution a “socialist takeover.”
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