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Sheldon, Peter, the candidates and climate change

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U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) has recently proposed suing energy corporations under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) for denying climate change. Simultaneously, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin has joined a group of 15 state attorneys general and two territorial attorneys general in a new association dubbed “Attorneys General United for Clean Power.” They hope to attack fuel companies in the same fashion as the action against tobacco companies that reaped cash awards for states. The premise is that fossil fuel corporations have knowingly harmed the public by denying the existence of global warming and continuing their practices without safeguarding the environment.

Climate change is often debated politically. Some politicians admit that the scientific proof that global warming exists is overwhelming. Some deny man’s hand in the changes, while some deny that significant change is actually occurring. However, what is most often argued about is whether or not the situation is as severe as depicted and to what degree our country’s activities have affected the world’s environmental horizon.

Whether one is a true believer or a science denier, perhaps the most pertinent question is how imminently could global warming ruin our celestial address, the Earth, if the condition does indeed exist? Is all the heated rhetoric concerning the phenomenon premature? Should our great-great-grandchildren worry when they are the caretakers of this planet, or should we commence on a revisionist regulatory road which will hamper commerce and competitiveness now?

One aspect of this issue is sure – global warming has become the religion of the far left, and anyone who disagrees with their conclusions and sense of immediacy is cast as an unreasonable heathen denier of truths. And some of the loudest accusers are the Ocean State’s elected officials.

Sanctimonious Shelly, otherwise known as Whitehouse, has often reprimanded others for not being good stewards of the environment. In speech after speech, both in the well of the Senate and in green-friendly venues, Shelly has spoken with great foreboding about his perceived immediate danger of climate change. Like Chicken Little, our senator has said that unless instantaneous action is taken the sky will fall. Global warming has been his signature issue, and as a result he has garnered widespread campaign financial support from the environmental lobby.

In an outrageously bold move, Whitehouse is now attempting to demonize energy companies and punish them under the RICO statute for producing energy products that our country relies on to operate. The senator has pressured U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to consider possible action against corporate climate change deniers. In response, she has delegated the consideration of the matter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She stated: “[I have] referred to the FBI to consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which federal law enforcement could take action.”

Furthermore, Whitehouse has written in a widely read Washington Post opinion piece his farfetched idea on the supposed scurrilous schemes of the energy industry. He describes these companies’ ulterior intentions as a “massive and sophisticated campaign to mislead the American people about the environmental harm caused by carbon pollution.”

Does the senator think we are unaware that when our autos’ tailpipes spew carbon monoxide that it is a pollutant? Also, does Sanctimonious Shelly believe that we will all have an epiphany when fuel companies admit that climate change is real and as a result we will garage our cars and mount up a horse?

Similarly, Kilmartin and his counterparts are also on a fool’s errand in search of a big payday. Kilmartin and his 16 fellow AGs are trying to build upon the success versus the tobacco companies and as a result are stretching the boundaries of civil law. Their premise is to try to prove that the fuel companies have systematically produced a campaign to deny global warming and as a result have not altered the way they produce their product or opted to invest in alternative energy.

In the same way tobacco companies were held culpable for those who chose to smoke, these attorneys general want to penalize an industry for a market-driven, sought-after product and equate its purchase with smoking.

Tobacco companies were held liable on the notion that they were willfully blind to the damage that smoking cigarettes had on their customers. Even though it is obviously clear that smoking was an elective pursuit, much in the same way that gassing up your car is also an act of one’s own volition, the courts held tobacco companies liable.

For example, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt clearly stated the overreach: “the ambition to use the law to silence voices with which we disagree.” The inference is that this possible action is not only political, and an instance of avarice, but it is also an attempted suppression of the First Amendment in energy employees stating their opinions.

In reference to the possible RICO case, University of Law Professor Jeffrey Grell states in his book “Grell on RICO” that the difficulty in these cases is to establish correlative links. In regard to this idea of applying the RICO statute to climate deniers, he said it would be “difficult to prove causation.”

However, legal scholar Jared Goldstein of Roger Williams University was much more enthusiastic. He stated the following: “And if it can be shown that these big energy companies made a conspiracy to lie to the American people about whether their products are poisoning the planet, then free speech should give them no protection from punishment.”

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Earth’s average land and ocean surface temperature has risen 1.06 degree centigrade between the years 1880 and 2012. And between 1950 and 2010, there has been at least a 3-percent increase in greenhouse gases (GHG) due to carbon emissions, deforestation, and use of aerosols. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said that at the present rate of global warming, over the next 50 years, the world’s temperature will increase approximately 3.1 degrees Fahrenheit. If their postulates are correct, sea levels will rise, devastating storms will be frequent, polar ice caps will melt, and shorelines will encroach inwards for miles upon miles all over the world.

Nevertheless, these approximations in the timeline are what are most argued upon. Some scientists believe that at current rates of emissions, catastrophic scenarios may be 100 years off or perhaps 150 years off. What is generally accepted is that the Earth is warming and the condition will have widespread adverse effects at some point in the future. And man’s carbon footprint has added to the deleterious effects.

Opportunistic politicians have attempted to speed the immediacy of global warming’s importance to feather their own nests. Certainly, that has been the case with Whitehouse, and to a lesser degree with Kilmartin. Of course, the presidential candidates have had to handle this political football during the campaign.

Expectedly, Democrat Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has vociferously condemned oil companies for the process of extracting fuel from shale called “fracking.” Stating concerns about contamination of groundwater, drinking water, and the process becoming a catalyst for earthquakes, Sanders wants the practice eliminated, stating doing so would help preserve our environment and lessen global warming. In regard to fossil fuel companies, he has said: “Their short-term profits are not more important than this planet.”

On the contrary, Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz believes the climate change issue to be a hoax. He stated: “The satellites that actually measure the temperature, that we’ve launched into the air to measure the temperature, they have recorded no significant warming whatsoever for the last 18 years.”

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has mostly sidestepped the issue. When challenged he has responded with weak vacillating rhetoric with no discernable standpoint.

As per usual, Hillary Clinton has been on all sides of the issue. In regard to fracking, she encouraged fracking in developing countries while she was secretary of state and recently condemned it at home. She has ostracized the oil companies for not being more conservative environmentally and yet Exxon-Mobil and Conoco-Phillips have given millions to the Clinton Foundation. She was non-committal on the Keystone XL pipeline and now recently came out against its construction. She is currently against widespread offshore oil drilling, but in 2006 voted in favor of new Gulf Coast offshore drilling.

Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich has perhaps the best mindset on global warming and climate change. “I am just saying that I am concerned about it, but I am not lying awake at night worrying that the sky is falling.” Unlike our Sanctimonious Shelly, Kasich is not Chicken Little.

Global warming is a problem whose severity will increase over time, of course the question is when. If we unilaterally penalize ourselves with over-regulation here at home we will decrease our competitiveness with the Pacific Rim. And if we attempt to punish energy companies who keep America moving with a market driven product we need, that is self-defeating. If Whitehouse and Kilmartin still object, they should mount up their steeds.

Comments

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  • Ken B

    I don't understand why the scientists studying climate chamge don't work to develop various species of decorative plant life, like Gregor Mendel did, that would consume twenty times the amount of carbon dioxide and produce 20 times the amount of oxygen. Every rooftop in a large city could have a botanical gsarden. .

    Friday, April 22, 2016 Report this

  • Straightnnarrow

    Shelley is another embarrassment (along with our Governess and the rest of the Congressional reps) to the citizens of this state. He has done nothing in Congress except preach this LIE about global warming while demonizing the energy companies who supply our homes, industries and farms with very necessary energy. These phonies should get on an fossil free plane and head to Cuba where socialism is practiced and preached.

    Saturday, April 23, 2016 Report this

  • falina

    Wait a minute? Didn't Shelly's wife just accept a job in California? That's one hell of a commute!!! I also noticed that he flew in on Saturday for Hillary Clinton's visit. (Along with the other 3 clowns) Womdering if he spent any of that time here planting trees for Earth Day? Or did he just hop right back on his jet and head back to DC? (Or perhaps way out to California to visit his wife?) We see you Sheldon.

    Monday, April 25, 2016 Report this

  • falina

    Wait a minute? Didn't Shelly's wife just accept a job in California? That's one hell of a commute!!! I also noticed that he flew in on Saturday for Hillary Clinton's visit. (Along with the other 3 clowns) Wondering if he spent any of that time here planting trees for Earth Day? Or did he just hop right back on his jet and head back to DC? (Or perhaps way out to California to visit his wife?) We see you Sheldon.

    Monday, April 25, 2016 Report this