Liberal attorneys general from 17 states have put a big red bulls-eye on the chest of big oil. Their bizarre claim is that, for years, energy companies fraudulently covered up their knowledge that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels cause catastrophic climate change. The most recent chapter of this witch hunt is a remarkable subpoena filed by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, which would require Exxon Mobil Corp. to turn over 40 years of internal company documents. It also demands that Exxon Mobil produce all its internal communication with conservative-leaning think tanks.
This is nothing more than an old-fashioned, political mob shakedown of a deep-pocketed industry for money. The attorneys general are hoping for a repeat of the multibillion-dollar tobacco company settlement in the 1990s. The big and obvious difference here is that tobacco companies sell a product that is dangerous to one’s health. The oil and gas companies sell energy that makes all modern industrial life possible.
Worse, they want to use the steel-heeled boot of government to get energy companies to stop giving money to free-market institutions that the left doesn’t agree with. But they are permitted to donate to the Sierra Club, the Wildlife Federation and the Center for American Progress.
The goal is to silence any opposition to the climate-change industrial complex. The way to create a scientific consensus on an issue is to muzzle anyone who dares disagree with the scientific consensus. If these science policemen had been around several hundred years ago, we’d all be forced to believe that the earth is flat.
