The fascists behind the fraud now going by the quotidian name of “climate change” get krazier and more dangerous to liberty by the day. Sane Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson explains:
If you care about free speech, you should pay attention to the campaign now being waged against Exxon Mobil. More than 50 environmental and civil rights groups have written Attorney General Loretta Lynch urging her to open a “federal probe” of the giant energy firm. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have also joined the chorus. The charge is that Exxon Mobil “systematically misled the public” on climate change, even as its executives recognized the dangers. New York’s attorney general has already launched an investigation.
What’s behind the latest assault are two recent pieces of investigative journalism that, based on company documents, concluded that Exxon Mobil played a double game. In the 1970s, when global warming began attracting scientific attention, the firm “assembled a brain trust [that deepened] the company’s understanding” of climate change, reported InsideClimate News. But in the late 1980s, the company switched to “climate denial,” manufacturing “doubt about .‚Äâ.‚Äâ. global warming its own scientists” had confirmed. Stories in the Los Angeles Times told a similar tale.
Not so, responds Exxon Mobil (unsurprisingly). The investigative pieces “cherry-pick” their evidence, exaggerating the divide between the company’s scientists and corporate policy, says Ken Cohen, vice president of public and government affairs. As an example, he cites a scientific presentation made to Exxon’s board of directors in early 1989 concluding that global warming is, in the briefing’s words, “deeply imbedded in scientific uncertainty .‚Äâ.‚Äâ. [and] will require substantial additional investigation.” Instead, Cohen asserts, the Los Angeles Times portrayed the presentation as demonstrating that the enormity of global warming was settled.
It doesn’t matter to these lunatics that “climate change” doesn’t pass even the most basic of logical questions (what caused the Little Ice Age? What happened to the water on Mars?), nor the fundamental historical truth that climate is change. Instead, they demand to shut down all disagreement while insisting, like demented children, that the “science is settled.” But science is never settled. If you doubt it, just ask Newton. Or Einstein.
The advocates of a probe into Exxon Mobil are essentially proposing that the company be punished for expressing its opinions. These opinions may be smart or stupid, constructive or destructive, sensible or self-interested. Whatever, they deserve protection. An investigation would, at the least, constitute a form of harassment that would warn other companies to be circumspect in airing their views. Matters could be worse if the government somehow imposes monetary penalties or opens the floodgates to suits by plaintiffs’ attorneys, a la the tobacco industry. Significantly, the letter to Attorney General Lynch does not allege any violation of law.
Exxon Mobil (2014 earnings: $32.5 billion) does not command our sympathy. But free speech does not belong only to the sympathetic. Casting Exxon Mobil as the scapegoat for global warming’s dilemmas is historically inaccurate and a political cheap shot with troubling constitutional implications.
Why are “environmentalists” like watermelons? Because they’re green on the outside and red on the inside. Which is why, of course, they want to upend the global economy and seize power. They never change.
