Mick Mulvaney

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said in a speech Wednesday night that Republicans won’t act on the climate crisis because the party doesn’t want to raise taxes or ask people to change their “lifestyle.”

“We take the position in my party that asking people to change their lifestyle dramatically, including by paying more taxes, is simply not something we are interested in doing,” Mulvaney said in response to a question on why the U.S. government is not doing more to combat the climate emergency.

The audience in attendance at the speech in the United Kingdom laughed at Mulvaney’s response, according to an audio recording obtained by the Washington Post.

Nathan Richardson, a law professor at the University of South Carolina and a fellow at the non-profit research organization Resources for the Future, tweeted that Mulvaney and the GOP’s position on climate “is increasingly a political loser.”

“And it is naive […]