Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have left more in their wake than destruction of property and devastation of lives. In the wreckage of the two storms, you can also see little pieces of the Constitution of the United States, torn up by global-warming hysterics, who now wish to criminalize what they call “climate-change denial.”
In the aftermath of the two major hurricanes, the left-wing magazine The Nation published an article written by Mark Hertsgaard on September 7, linking climate-change skepticism with actual murder. In his piece, entitled “Climate Denialism Is Literally Killing Us,” Hertsgaard writes that “murder is murder” and “we should punish it as such.”
Lest you think that Hertsgaard is simply one lone lunatic in a sea of rational journalists and scientists, there are dozens of others who are calling for the jailing of public officials who, in their words, “deny science” and work against the sweeping socialist reforms demanded by climate alarmists.
Brad Johnson, executive director of the super-PAC Climate Hawks Vote, is similarly stern in his rebuke of those who question the science of climate change. In a tweet on September 7, he issued the following set of rules for climate disasters such as Harvey and Irma: “1. Save lives. 2. Global warming is here. 3. Put public officials who reject science in jail.”
At least saving lives was still number one in Johnson’s view. Jailing the dissidents made only number three on his to-do list.
And these calls for the punishment of climate realists are not new. As early as 2015, climate alarmist and noted energy glutton Al Gore called for sanctions against global-warming skeptics, insisting, “We need to put a price on denial in politics.” Presumably Gore was talking about the voting booth. But who knows these days?
In September of 2015, a group of 20 scientists from leading universities wrote a letter to President Obama calling for the use of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to perform an “investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change.”
In 2016, television personality Bill Nye jumped on the bandwagon. When asked if climate-change deniers should be jailed, Nye, a mechanical engineer by education and a scientist by self-proclamation, did not exactly call for the jailing of skeptics, but he didn’t rule it out, either. “Well, we’ll see what happens,” Nye said. “Was it appropriate to jail the guys from Enron?” Nye went on to say that “the introduction of this extreme doubt about climate change is affecting my quality of life.”
In March of 2016, then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed to the Senate Judiciary Committee that she had held internal meetings on whether climate-change deniers could be charged with civil offenses. She then referred the issue to the FBI for further review. In addition, Democrat rising star and former California Attorney General Kamala Harris and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman both opened up state inquiries as to whether ExxonMobil lied to shareholders and the public about the dangers of climate change.
And lest you think that all this alarmist-speak is coming from only left-wing pundits, scientists, and politicians in America, you should know that the Pope has also weighed in on climate change. While not calling for imprisonment of skeptics, the pontiff did hint that they are very bad people, declaring, “Anyone who denies [climate change] should go to the scientists and ask them. They speak very clearly. Climate change is having an effect, and scientists are telling us which path to follow.”
Shouldn’t a pope be insisting that God tell us which path to follow? The pontiff went on to say, “We must take [climate change] seriously…. History will judge our decision.”
There is an eerie Stalinist feel to these calls for criminal punishment of climate-change skeptics. Isn’t it generally totalitarian regimes which imprison dissenters? Isn’t this the type of thing one sees in the former USSR? The Peoples Republic of China? Nazi Germany?
There is a tendency on the part of rational human beings, global-warming believers and skeptics alike, to just laugh off the insanity of people such as Hertsgaard and Johnson. But the calls for actual criminal punishment of those who are skeptical of anthropogenic climate change are growing. And anyone who “denies” that anthropogenic global warming is occurring or is a serious problem, is in the crosshairs.
