Stoking their long-running feud, California Gov. Jerry Brown recently jabbed at former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, saying Golden State is “growing a hell of a lot faster than Texas.”
Is that a fact? Gardner Selby of the PolitiFact Texas fact-checking team has the answer.
Brown made this claim in the middle of an impassioned defense of climate change science at the American Geophysical Union conference on Dec. 14, 2016 in San Francisco.
“We’ve proved in California that the economy grows. And it grows in part because of the climate rules that we’ve adopted,” Brown said.
Perry, a climate change skeptic, was recently selected U.S. energy secretary by President-elect Trump. While Texas governor, he repeatedly visited California in an attempt to lure jobs to the Lone Star State, with the promise of less regulation and lower costs.
In his speech, Brown said Perry’s critiques about California’s job-killing red tape don’t hold up.
“Now remember our new secretary of energy, he was coming to California to say: ‘Come to Texas because we have all the jobs in Texas.”
“Well, Rick: I got some news for you, California is growing a hell of a lot faster than Texas, and we have more sun than you have oil!”
Hear how Brown’s claim scored in the player above.
