By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
It’s not easy to make one of the world’s biggest
fossil-fuel companies a sympathetic victim, but a collection of state attorneys
general, led by Eric Schneiderman of New York, has managed it.
They have launched a campaign against Exxon Mobil that is
a transparent — nay, an explicit — attempt to punish dissent on climate change.
The members of the self-described “Green 20” are demonstrating a
banana-republic-worthy understanding of the law and their responsibilities.
They shouldn’t be entrusted with the power of a meter maid, let alone a top position
in law enforcement.
Schneiderman subpoenaed Exxon Mobil last year, in what
purports to be a fraud investigation. The alleged offense is having less
alarmist views on global warming over the years than the green clerisy deems
acceptable. How this would constitute fraud is unclear.
Investors would have found Exxon Mobil alluring even if
the company had maintained that the planet was in danger of becoming
uninhabitable, for no other reason than oil is a miraculously efficient source
of energy that we aren’t close to replacing. Consumers would have filled their
cars with Exxon Mobil’s product regardless, and surely felt defrauded only if
the gasoline didn’t get them to work or to their kids’ soccer practice as
advertised.
Usually, officials charged with law enforcement at least
try to obscure their political motivations. Not the attorneys general who stood
with Schneiderman at a saber-rattling press conference a few weeks ago.
Dispensing with any pretense of disinterestedness, they dubbed themselves “AGs
United for Clean Power.” Al Gore appeared at the presser, not as a legal
expert, but as a totem of the green Left. Schneiderman said that President
Barack Obama’s climate agenda has been frustrated, so he and his colleagues
would work “creatively” and “aggressively” to advance it.
That is certainly his right — if he resigns and becomes
an official at the Sierra Club or runs for Congress. Instead, he is using the
powers of his office to harass a company with opinions he finds uncongenial.
The attorney general of the Virgin Islands, of all
places, has joined in, even though Exxon Mobil has no assets or staff there. He
has subpoenaed the company’s documents going back roughly 40 years under an
anti-racketeering statute and, for good measure, also has subpoenaed the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank that once received
donations from Exxon.
The conceit of this campaign is that if it weren’t for
the likes of Exxon Mobil, the climate debate would be settled by now. This is a
view that doesn’t allow for honest disagreement about a hideously complex
subject that, even if you accept the premises of the alarmists, isn’t
susceptible to a ready solution.
Besides, Exxon Mobil has accepted elements of the climate
orthodoxy for years now. It has included statements about the potential risks
of warming in official documents going back a decade, and it favors a carbon
tax. Even if Exxon Mobil has deliberately tilted toward the side of the climate
debate most convenient for it, that’s not a crime. If having a self-serving
opinion were against the law, much of the political debate in this country
would shut down.
The Green 20 needn’t win a case against Exxon Mobil or
any other fossil-fuel company to achieve its ends. Every time that Exxon Mobil
has to say that it believes in global warming and no longer funds climate
skeptics, it is a moral victory for the AGs. The mere example of Exxon Mobil
being forced to expend resources defending itself is a warning to everyone
else. And if a settlement can be extorted out of the company and used to fund
the green Left, all the better.
All of this is a blatant abuse of power, which is why
anyone who values the First Amendment and the rule of law has to side with the
massive multinational corporation over AGs who are a disgrace to their offices.
No comments:
Post a Comment