By Brad Friedman on 12/6/2013, 8:05am PT  

I asked on Thursday's Green News Report, but it deserves highlight and asking again: Is Maine's Governor Paul LePage (R) the dumbest governor in the country? Or the dumbest governor in history?

Via David Edwards at RAW STORY...

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) on Thursday encouraged people to look on the bright side of global warming.

At the 64th annual Maine Transportation Conference, the governor bucked the thinking of many Republicans and admitted that the planet was getting warmer, but he said that people were thinking about it the wrong way.

"Everybody looks at the negative effects of global warming, but with the ice melting, the Northern Passage has opened up," LePage explained, according to the Bangor Daily News. "So maybe, instead of being at the end of the pipeline, we're now at the beginning of a new pipeline."

As Edwards goes on to note, "The Voice of Russia reported in 2011 that 85 percent of the ships crossing the Northern Sea Route were carrying gas or oil."

As Desi Doyen said in response to my unanswerable question on GNR: "Yup, they break the Arctic, and he's happy because they can make money on it." Yup. And speed up the breaking of the entire planet in the process. Paul LePage is a genius.

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UPDATE: Just a couple more points to help you determine just how brilliant LePage is. While celebrating more oil shipping, thanks to Arctic ice melt (caused by burning oil), LePage fails to note the dangers posed to Maine's maple syrup industry by climate change, not to mention the cancellation of the 2014 shrimping season in the Gulf of Maine "in response to the species' collapse." Last year's shrimp harvest was the smallest in decades and the report that led to cancellation of this year's season "attributed the collapse in part to warming ocean temperatures."

As Glen Brand, the director of the Sierra Club of Maine told the Bangor Daily News, "Maine is already suffering from numerous problems from climate change, including threats to the state's fisheries, forests, coasts and tourist industries."

Other than all that though, LePage remains a genius for celebrating global warming and the great effects it'll have for his constituents in Maine!

LATER UPDATE: Sorry, just had to include one more, since I think this may answer the "dumb or dumbest?" question about LePage once and for all. See this, particularly the last sentence...

LePage, however, isn't known for his concern over the risks of climate change. Earlier this year, he pushed to get Maine exempted from certain anti-smog regulations, saying an exemption would promote economic development in the state. In June, he vetoed a bill that would have established a working group for climate change adaptation in Maine. And in April, he claimed a wind turbine in Maine depended on a "little electric motor that turns the blades."
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