WATCH: Calif. Republican's anti-fluoride rant opens climate skeptics' conference

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) lashed out against water fluoridation as part of his speech during the first night of a conference for climate change skeptics, Vice reported.

"A lot of these things come down to freedom issues," Rohrabacker said during the event, organized by the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank. "They come down to whether or not we will control our own destiny. The fact that we will be consistent with what our founding fathers had in mind for us in controlling our own lives."

Rohrabacker, a member of the House Science Committee, said he did not know whether fluoridating drinking water provided benefits, ignoring actual scientific research indicating that it lowered users' risk of tooth decay. Instead he portrayed it as one example of government overreach.

"I do know that in this country, we should be the ones who should be deciding what we put into our bodies one way or the other," he said. "Not the federal government or the local government putting fluoride into our water."

The congressman, who has called global warming a "total fraud" perpetrated with the intention of starting a "global government," also made light of other climate-related concerns like the thinning of the planet's ozone layer, which he derisively referred to as the "ozone hole."

"What happened when that crisis hit?" he asked. "We had to get rid of freon. We had to get rid of all the stuff in the spray cans. How much did that cost us? When we spend billions of dollars needlessly because someone has frightened us into accepting a position, it damages people in our society."

As Vice noted, the U.S. addressed the issue through a series of amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990 that passed with bipartisan congressional support and proposed by Republican President George H.W. Bush.

Watch Rohrabacker's remarks, as posted on Tuesday, below.