Rick Perry says climate change debate is "secondary" amid Harvey destruction

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, a former Texas governor, is still taken aback by Hurricane Harvey's devastation, but said conversations about climate change can wait.

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry -
he has argued that the climate change
debate is very secondary at this
particular time.

"No one has ever seen flooding like this," he told CBSN in an interview Friday, noting that parts of Texas had seen 50 inches of rain. 

In spite of the record-breaking rainfall and scientists charging that warming seas have caused hurricanes of greater intensity, Perry declined to weigh in right now on whether the White House would make any changes to its stance on climate change.

"We can line up scientists on both sides of this," he told CBSN's Stephanie Sy, but "this is not the time to be having this conversation." At this moment, he said, it's time to focus on helping victims recover from the damage wrought by Harvey.

"Everyone wants to run to the climate change debate, but that is very secondary at this particular time," he said.

Read the CBS story - “Rick Perry says climate change debate is "secondary" amid Harvey destruction.”

(Most people have a perverse avoidance of discussing the cause of an event while it is actually happening or whichever community affected is knee deep in the recovery process - that is wrong, for the evidence is frequently its richest, and clearest, when at its peak, or when the difficulty as at its worst. Rick Perry’s suggestion that climate change debate - that’s the first mistake for there is no ‘debate’ - is "secondary" amid Harvey destruction is political delaying tactic during which people can avoid the hard questions and, equally, the hard answers - as Al Gore has said the “inconvenient truth” - Robert McLean)