Bill Clinton: GOP climate change skeptics make America look like "a joke"

The former president, speaking at an event kicking off the Clinton Global Initiative's seventh annual conference in New York City, urged Americans to force the collective acknowledgment of climate change among conservative politicians.

"If you're an American, the best thing you can do is to make it politically unacceptable for people to engage in denial" about climate change, said Clinton, according to Politico.

Calling the lack of attention to the issue "really tragic," Mr. Clinton said that Americans could help push change by refusing to vote for climate change skeptics.

"I mean, it makes us - we look like a joke, right? You can't win the nomination of one of the major parties in the country if you admit that the scientists are right? That disqualifies you from doing it? You could really help us there," Clinton said.

"We need the debate in America and every country between people who are a little bit to the right and people who are a little bit to the left about what the best way is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, what is the best, most economical way to do it, what will get more done quicker," he continued. "So if you want to save the planet, the best way to rebuke the global warmers is to be able to point to every single solitary community to a specific example where changing the way we produce and consume energy increased, not decreased, employment."

Texas Governor Rick Perry, who is currently at the head of the field of GOP presidential contenders, said in August that he does not believe in global warming science. He also suggested that scientists' findings on the subject were grounded in data manipulated for financial gain.

Mitt Romney, another Republican frontrunner, acknowledged in June that he believes humans have contributed to global warming, but later hedged his comments by noting that while he thinks (but does not know) that the world is getting hotter, "I don't know if it's mostly caused by humans."

"Do I think the world's getting hotter? Yeah, I don't know that but I think that it is," Romney said, according to Reuters. "I don't know if it's mostly caused by humans."

Michele Bachmann, meanwhile, has been vehement in her denial of climate change, which she has referred to as "manufactured science" as opposed to "real science."

Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman is the only Republican candidate in the crowded GOP field to unabashedly embrace the scientific evidence behind climate change. And in a move seemingly meant to prove Mr. Clinton's theory that Americans couldn't - or shouldn't - take seriously a candidate who doesn't believe in that science, Huntsman in August took to Twitter to clarify his position on the issue.

"To be clear, I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy," he wrote.

In a Republican debate earlier this month, he continued: "Listen, when you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call into question the science of evolution, all I'm saying is that, in order for the Republican Party to win, we can't run from science. We can't run from mainstream conservative philosophy. We've got to win voters."