Mandela Barnes in 2015: "Oil is destroying the world in every possible way"

Mandela Barnes, the Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate, said in 2015 that he believes “oil is destroying the world”—an apocalyptic claim that conflicts with his more recent campaign promise to try to make gas more affordable for consumers.

“Oil is destroying the world in every possible way,” Barnes, Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor, said on Twitter in 2015.

The remark is the latest evidence of Barnes’s extreme opposition to domestic energy production, which he has attempted to soften on the campaign trail. The news comes as Democratic leaders have struggled with political fallout from rising energy prices, after years of demonizing and blocking domestic oil and gas projects.