On Climate Change, Who Will Censure the Censors?

Bloomberg discusses the subpoena CEI received from an attorney general as an attempt to silence our free speech on climate change. 

Eight months ago, state attorneys general were issuing subpoenas to the Competitive Enterprise Institute aimed at forcing the organization to cough up all communications about climate change, based on novel and changeable legal theories that boiled down to “We don’t like what you said about climate change.” How many of the people who were horrified by Trump’s actions were equally horrified by this chilling move by government authorities to abrogate the free speech rights of private actors? How many were worried about what the precedents thus set might do to the spirit of free and open inquiry?

Ah, I will be told, but ExxonMobil was the ultimate target of those subpoenas, and ExxonMobil is a corporation. And climate change is an existential threat that could destroy life as we know it in the 21st century. Are those attorneys general just supposed to let a corporation run around denying this catastrophic risk in order to line their own pockets?

Well, yes they are. Because it’s too dangerous not to.

The differences between those subpoenas and the Trump transition's witch hunt only blur their ultimate sameness. Each case will yield some unique fact that the proponents of government censorship can use to distinguish it from the attacks on our own side. That’s why we establish a very broad and neutral principle that you don’t go after anyone for what they believe, whether those ideas are right or wrong, whether they are held by a government employee or a corporation, and whether those who hold them are in power or out of it.

Read the full article at Bloomberg.