NEIL CAVUTO (HOST): All right, well 190 nations signing on this climate change agreement that we and the United States will bear most of the costs getting things up and running we're told down the road. China and India will pitch in. They'd made promises too, I'm just telling you. A lot of those are like my promises to eat a salad, I'm just saying don't hold your breath. But that's neither here nor there. Ben Stein has seen and heard this argument, particularly some of the more specious points in his eyes about all the jobs that will be created, when he is looking at all the jobs in the fossil fuel industry that have already gone, thanks to these tumbling energy prices. Nevertheless, there's a lot more to this agreement that Ben Stein hates than those that I'm outlining right now.

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BEN STEIN: Look, I want to ask a question. What if man-made climate change is a fraud? I'm not saying it is, and I'm not saying I don't want clean air. I wrote the first speech that any president sent up to Congress, for clean air, for the Clean Air Act under Mr. Nixon. So I'm all for clean air. But man-made climate change? First of all, climate change itself is very much in question. The Earth stopped heating up about 25 years ago. The data that shows that the Earth is the hottest it's been in 200 years, or whatever, is very much in question because the data from 200 years ago is extremely specious. Yes, the polar ice cap in the North Pole is melting, but the polar ice cap in the South Pole is getting very, very much bigger, very very rapidly. Yes, indeed, we have questions about the climate, but there have always been questions about the climate, and since you always make a point of pointing out my age, and I am a lot older than you, I will say that I can remember very well in the sixties and early seventies when we were fearing a new ice age. What if, by any chance, all of this climate change A, is not happening, or B, if it is happening, is not man made, or if it is man-made, if it's not coming from the U.S., but coming from China and India? And we're going to crucify the American worker and the American businessman in the name of a false goal? What if that's happening?It's not impossible.

CAVUTO: Well you ought to get with the program, young man, because the whole world has signed on to this, and the whole world is --

STEIN: I know but the whole --

CAVUTO: -- going to pony up for this. And we are going to pony up a lot of this. But you're quite right to say what the focus was in the seventies, particularly when we were worried about a big freeze. But having said that, I talked to all of these scientists who say, “well, Neil, the evidence is irrefutable now, and nine out of ten buy this.”

STEIN: It isn't irrefutable at all.

CAVUTO: And then I come to find out that climatologists, or whatever we call them, they're not -- the ratio isn't that strong. So we are committing a lot of money, a lot of American money, to something that looks like it is a problem. The flip they give to you, Ben, is saying, “well, what have we got to lose trying to develop cleaner factories, cleaner air? What do we lose doing that?”

STEIN: A, we lose people's jobs. I mean, yes, to a millionaire's college student's son or daughter, who demonstrates for saving the Earth, it means nothing. But for a coal miner in West Virginia or Tennessee or Virginia, it means a great, great deal. For a person losing his job in the oil fields in North Dakota or in West Texas, it means a great, great deal. For a person who is going to have to put up his tax dollars to buy much more expensive energy when fossil fuel energy is by far the most effective, efficient form of energy we've ever known on this planet, it means a great, great deal. But I wonder, look here's China, our best friend, our buddy. Mr. Nixon, my former boss, and Pat Buchanan's former boss, signed them into the world community of nations. They're the ones ginning out all these pollutants that are supposedly causing global warming, and they haven't even promised to stop. They're just promised they'll consider it at some point down the road. If we're really going to try to, quote, “save the Earth,” which by the way is a ridiculous goal -- I mean, saving the Earth, the Earth is not really in danger of being lost. If we're going to really “save the Earth,” to use that specious idea, China's got to sign on in a huge way. India's got to sign on in a huge way. They're not doing it. All the burden comes onto the American worker.

Previously:

On Fox, Ben Stein Suggests Obama's Defense Of Iran Deal Stems From Poor Mental Health

Ben Stein On Fox: There Are An Awful Lot Of Poor People “Who Are Slobs, Drunks, [And] Drug Addicts”

Ben Stein On Fox: Obama Is “The Most Racist President There Has Ever Been In America”