The Attorney General of New York has joined
with 19 other State Attorneys’ General to
launch a Multi-State criminal investigation
focusing on whether ExxonMobil, other petroleum
and energy companies as well as public policy
institutions and scientists are engaged in
some kind of racketeering enterprise to mislead
the public on climate change. Most recently,
as part of that Multi-State investigation,
the Competitive Enterprise Institute received
a wide-ranging subpoena asking for all of
its internal communications and external communications,
internal documents, basically everything it's
ever done on climate change over a period
of a decade. The prosecutors involved in this
case are drawing on precedent of civil RICO
claims that were brought against the tobacco
industry in the 90’s and 2000’s. But this
is very different. The tobacco industry there
is arguably an effort to cover up what were
very serious harms and defects with its products
that that industry knew about. On the other
hand, with climate change you’ve got this
enormous, very wide-ranging, ongoing decades-long
debate where the answers are still unclear
in terms of exactly how it functions, what
the different parameters are, the extent to
which human anthropogenic emissions are relevant
and the extent to which we might see catastrophic
impacts or not and the extent to which we
ought to respond preemptively in a policy
fashion or not. Being targeted for a subpoena,
being the subject of a lawsuit, having that
cloud of legal uncertainty floating over your
head is enough to intimidate and it’s enough
to chill very important speech. Simply put,
if we’re going to reach the right solutions
for climate change, if we’re going to spend
the right amount of money, if we’re going
to have the right regulations and if we’re
going to reach a policy that people agree
is a reasonable and correct policy, the way
we’re going to get there is by having a
free and open and wide-ranging debate, we’re
not going to get there by artificially shutting
down half the debate, by threatening people
with criminal sanctions. This isn’t just
about climate change, it’s about the way
that we formulate public policy and the way
that we participate in politics in the United
States of America. We’ve always had the
view in America that more speech is better
but if you disagree with someone you don’t
shut him up; you tell him why he’s wrong
and you tell the public why he’s wrong.
