Cross-posted from Climate Progress.

In Wednesday night’s interview with former EPA Administrator Carol Browner, Stephen Colbert came out swinging with a line straight out of the Republican playbook:

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The EPA is useless. That is an indisputable fact … We protected the air and the water. We cleaned it up. Now you’re just rubbing it in our faces by continuing to keep it clean.

Colbert gave Browner, a Center for American Progress senior fellow, the chance to defend the EPA, who explained why regulations create more economic opportunity. Ultimately, Colbert came up with his own solution — describing why pollution is a better job creator than cleaning up the environment:

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If there’s more pollution then there’s more work for the doctors who have to cure us of the diseases we get from the things we eat and drink. I can use your logic against you.

Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann were furiously taking notes and have already added the talking point to their energy plans.

Watch it:

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Colbert also has a very funny intro to the interview, in which he mocks the Republican claims that the EPA is a “job killer.”

Yes. This job-killing cemetery is murdering jobs and then burying them in itself. Jobs. Everyone knows pollution is a job creator.

Watch it: