Joe Rogan Challenges Bernie Sanders Over Climate Change: ‘Lot Of Money Involved’
Charlie Kirk Staff
06/26/2025

Podcaster Joe Rogan hit Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with facts he could not deny when it came to the history of the global climate and the senator did not know what to do.
“BERNIE SANDERS: You gotta deal with this climate change issue. And I know that, you know, there are some people who think climate change is a hoax. It ain’t a hoax. I think the last 10 years have been the warmest on record, and we can create millions of good-paying jobs transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency, to solar, to wind, and other sustainable energies,” Sanders said.
“I think the climate change issue is very complicated. And I think—did you see the Washington Post piece that they wrote where they did this long-term view?” Rogan responded.
“First of all, the reality is that the Earth’s temperature has never been static, right? We both agree on that. It’s always been up and down. There’s been ice ages and heat waves. And then the Washington Post looked at it—what was the time period that they looked at? That essentially they found that we’re in a cooling period. That the earth, over the past ten amount of years…,” he said. “And this was like a very inconvenient discovery, but they had to report the data. And kudos to them for doing that.”
“Scientists have captured the Earth’s climate change over the last 485 million years. Here’s a surprising place we stand now. So look at the far end of that graph and you see we’re in a cooling period,” he said.
“Well, I’m not sure. I didn’t read that article. But I, you know, the scientists who are out there…,” he said before Rogan interrupted.
“I know, but there’s a lot of money involved in that too, Bernie. That’s part of the problem. There’s a lot of money involved in this whole climate change emergency issue. And there’s a lot of control. And that’s—that’s a big part of this problem,” the podcaster said.
“Not only that, if we’re just talking about primarily carbon and carbon footprint—what are we going to do about China? Because China is like—what percentage of—they are the major polluter right now in terms of carbon. We’re number two. We used to be one. They’re number one right now. I think they have an enormous percent of global…,” he said before Sanders cut in.
“I think it’s number one. I don’t know what—this is not an American issue. It is a global issue. And all I can tell you is that we are, in my view, going to see more extreme weather disturbances in the coming years than we have ever—and we’re seeing them right now,” the senator responded.
“We are seeing—but scientists don’t agree. Well, this is where it gets confusing because scientists that are in agreement—there’s all these entanglements whenever someone’s discussing something, whether it’s economics or whether it’s health issues or pharmaceutical drugs. There’s financial entanglements. I think we both agree with that, right?” Rogan said.
“And I think this is part of the issue with this whole climate change emergency as well. Because it’s not just that—we could all agree pollution is a major factor. It’s a huge issue in the world today. We could all agree with that, right?” he said.