Q&A: The League of Conservation Voters’ Take on House Speaker Mike Johnson’s Voting Record: ‘Appalling’

“To call him a climate skeptic is generous,” says the league’s Tiernan Sittenfeld. “He's said outrageous things about climate change, and what's causing it, whether he believes it's happening.”

From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Managing Producer Jenni Doering with Tiernan Sittenfeld of the League of Conservation Voters. 

JENNI DOERING: After tumultuous weeks of failed votes, the Republican led House of Representatives finally elected a new speaker of the House on October 25th.

Speaker Mike Johnson represents the 4th Congressional District in Louisiana, a state that’s an oil and gas hub.

Speaker Johnson’s far-right conservative record and endorsement by former President Trump have drawn sharp criticism from many liberals and moderates, including progressive conservation advocates.

The left-leaning League of Conservation Voters keeps track of how elected officials vote on legislation on the environment and some key social issues. And from their perspective Speaker Johnson has only aligned with them 2 percent of the time since first winning his seat in 2017.

Tiernan Sittenfeld is the senior vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters and she joins me now from Washington. Tiernan, welcome back to Living on Earth!

TIERNAN SITTENFELD:  Thank you for having me. It’s good to be back.

DOERING: So, Speaker Mike Johnson has a League of Conservation Voters lifetime score of 2 percent. That’s almost as low as it gets. What does that actually mean?

SITTENFELD:  Unfortunately, Speaker Mike Johnson is incredibly extreme across the board. And that is absolutely the case when it comes to his record on combating the climate crisis, on clean energy, on environmental justice. Basically, at every step, he has stood in the way of progress on all of that. I think he’s literally taken only four votes that we would consider pro-environment out of more than 160 during the course of his career. Those are the votes that the League of Conservation has included in our national environmental scorecard during the time that he has been in Congress. And that is just appalling. 

To vote against the air we breathe, the water we drink, the lands we cherish 98 percent of the time, is just beyond the pale. And we need to ask ourselves, why is he doing that? And one of the very biggest reasons is the large amounts of money that he has taken from the oil and gas industry. 

And to call him a climate skeptic is generous.  He’s said outrageous things about climate change, and what’s causing it, whether he believes it’s happening. And then even just in his first few days as Speaker, he has gone after the affordable clean energy plan that’s known as the inflation Reduction Act. 

It’s the biggest step our country has ever taken to combat the climate crisis, to invest in environmental justice, to advance clean energy jobs, and make sure that they are good-paying, family-sustaining jobs. And he is trying to gut that, he is going after badly needed funding at the Environmental Protection Agency, and so much more. So this is someone who is really extreme and acting at the behest of Big Oil day in and day out.

Interview by Jenni Doering, “Living on Earth”