When the Power of the State Was Used to Bully Climate-Policy Dissenters

Todd Myers, writing in National Review, covers CEI’s climate change subpoeana pushback from 2016.

Last year, Washington attorney general Bob Ferguson announced that he would be joining other blue-state attorneys general to investigate ExxonMobil and conservative groups that work on the issue of climate change. Though they claimed otherwise, the AGs’ goal was to chill opposition to costly and ineffective climate policies pushed by the environmental Left. And while he was not the public face of the effort, Ferguson’s actions are emblematic of how attempts to suppress speech manifest themselves in environmental policy.

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It was not the first time that UCS had distorted the truth to promote its agenda while claiming the objective mantle of science. If the group’s involvement with the lawsuit and the AGs’ pledge leave any doubt that this effort was simply an attempt to intimidate under pretense of investigating, consider the result. When the Competitive Enterprise Institute pushed back on a subpoena it had been served, the group of AGs dropped it almost immediately, which suggests that they never had a serious interest in bringing a case.

Read the full article at National Review.