Bill Targeting Climate Change Skepticism Withdrawn, But Fight Against Dissent Continues

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Due to what many call California’s state religion, a Senate bill scheduled for floor action this past week could have put Golden State businesses in legal trouble for questioning climate change. Thankfully, the ill-conceived piece of legislation has been scrubbed. For now.

Senate Bill 1161, also known as California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act of 2016, hoped to undermine Californians’ 1st Amendment protections by allowing state and local prosecutors to pursue claims against groups expressing skepticism when it comes to climate change. According to the state Senate Rules Committee, the bill would have given district attorneys and the Attorney General the power to pursue Unfair Competition Law claims against businesses or organizations that have “directly or indirectly engaged in unfair competition with respect to scientific evidence regarding the existence, extent, or current or future impacts of anthropogenic induced climate change.”

To Sacramento Bee’s Ben Boychuck, if the bill had turned into law, it “would have been demolished on First Amendment grounds,” prompting many to believe that Senators behind this bill withdrew SB 1161 from consideration out of fear for the long term ramifications.

Fairly recently, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch claimed she was considering the possibility of pursuing civil actions against climate change skepticism, by saying that she had referred to the FBI to “consider whether or not it meets the criteria for which we could take action.” Former congressman Dr. Ron Paul responded to her comments shortly after, saying that “Defending speech we do not agree with is necessary to effectively protect the speech we support.”

But logic has no place in emotional discussions.

To many who consider themselves progressives, chanting “science” to any dissenting argument may suffice. But once the issue begins prompting legislation that protects one group from the other, however, things get messy.

While SB 1161 has been withdrawn for now, nothing keeps climate change advocates from pushing for similar laws in different states or at the federal level. But believing that an argument has been proven correct isn’t enough to silence an individual.

While commenting on the possibility of having the FBI pursuing civil actions against climate change skeptics, Paul asked the audience if it would be OK to silence Keynesian economist Paul Krugman because Austrian economists believe “the argument over whether we should audit, and then end, the Federal Reserve is settled.”

The obvious answer is no.

But the Democratic Party is still convinced that the best line of action is to continue to call for more government action when it comes to energy, releasing the final draft of the organization’s official platform pushing for a petroleum-free America by mid-century.

While assuming that the government has a say in how the energy market should organize itself, politicians line up behind the climate change cause. Often ignoring the fact oil-rich nations with terrible humanitarian records such as Saudi Arabia often fund efforts to undermine competing industries in America.

Maybe over time, we will be able to learn whether there’s a link between the explosion of the popularity of the climate change cause and the increasing involvement of Middle East nations in US politics.