Climate extremism will survive a single extremist’s fall from grace. Still, the resignation amid scandal of New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman illuminates a political movement choking on self-righteousness.
Not all climate militants are, like Schneiderman, hypocrites.
The liberal Democrat earned that condemnation by championing women’s interests in public while, according to accusations reported by the New Yorker, physically abusing females in private.
And not all climate activists are, like Schneiderman, inclined to coopt liberal hope in service to personal ambition.
Grandstanding attorneys-general have become New York governors in recent years.
Schneiderman was a star amid his state’s liberals and craved attention. According to the New York Times, his office issued 42 news releases in April to publicize sundry investigations of the nefarious and mighty.
Now, the political height Schneiderman hoped to reach might never be known.
Indeed, not all climate crusaders are anything like the fallen AG, and their agenda doesn’t collapse because one standard-bearer lost credibility.
Some of them might even be willing to join a rational discussion about climate complexities and consider remedies not requiring the scuttling of fossil energy.
Alas, such discussion is verboten at elite levels of academia, leftward politics, and news media.
Of this intellectual repression, Schneiderman was an ardent enforcer.
He was one of 17 state AGs who in 2016 tried to use subpoena power to intimidate the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute under the banner of “clean power.”
And he led the legal case trying to hold ExxonMobil and other oil companies accountable for acknowledging climate change years ago but not responding in accordance with today’s febrile agenda.
This tactic asserts aggressive political goals as indisputable conditions of argument and retrospectively criminalizes discussion. Stretching prosecutorial authority to thus constrain speech is, in a democratic republic, abominable.
The abuse of women is inhuman. It’s more deplorable than the abuse of law to compromise freedom, which is just un-American.
While the inhuman offenses alleged against Schneiderman don’t discredit climate activism, though, the un-American one does.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted May 11, 2018; author’s email: [email protected])