Last week, WUWT posted an essay by “aspiring Ph.D meteorologist” Chris Martz (he plans on attending college to get a meteorology degree) complaining about how deniers “have dealt with bullying.” Apparently, Martz rarely sees his side bully people who accept the scientific consensus (aside from picking on Al Gore). Instead he sees “a lot more bullying and harassment” coming from the consensus camp.
His evidence for this claim is a handful of angry tweets which will will admit were unkind. But is his overall thesis true? Do environmentalists do “a lot more bullying” than their opposition?
Twitter is the be all and end all of The Discourse, of course. But let’s look around for some other evidence of who is using power differentials to exert control of who, and explore if bullying is really a big problem or just a pretext to complain about being ridiculed for taking a ridiculous position.
Coincidentally, Peter Schwartzstein wrote in the Atlantic the very next day on how authoritarian regimes in the Middle East are actively targeting conservationists.
[See the rest after the jump!]
While deniers face terrifying consequences like angry tweets, environmentalists worldwide are invoking the ire of people with real power. Environmental researcher doing field work in Iran, Amirhossein Khalegi and his conservation companions await a potential death sentence for “sowing corruption on Earth.” Another environmentalist, Mr. Seyed Emami, died in custody last year under mysterious circumstances officials called a suicide. These conservationists’ crimes are supposedly espionage, the evidence for which, Schwartzstein writes, are “outlandish confessions that appear to have been extracted under torture.”
Nearly 200 environmentalists who were killed in 2017, Schwartzstein reports, with several dozen more happening recently, including “an elderly Turkish couple campaigning against a mine and at least six anti-dam protesters in Sudan.”
But what about here in the US? Surely there’s no way that here, where the First Amendment protects political speech, including the right to “bully” deniers, that there could be a similarly authoritarian crackdown on environmental activists, right?
Wrong! There are ample examples of so-called alarmists being bullied over the past couple decades, be it through congressional harassment, dead rats, fake anthrax, or getting fired from their government position.
But wait, there’s more! It’s not just scientists, but even everyday americans who simply want to exercise their 1st Amendment rights are getting harassed. As the Intercept covered in January, Canadian energy company Enbridge has been utilizing law enforcement to deal with pipeline protestors over the past eighteen months. “Law enforcement has engaged in a coordinated effort to identify potential anti-pipeline camps and monitor individual protesters,” the Intercept explains, “repeatedly turning for guidance to the North Dakota officials responsible for the militarized response at Standing Rock in 2016.”
And for those who don’t remember that militarized response at Standing Rock, “law enforcement used water cannons, rubber bullets, armored personnel carriers, and sound cannons in an operation that resulted in serious injuries.”
But the use of state force to protect corporate interests at the expense of public wellbeing and our right to free speech and protest is hardly a new threat. As (again) the Intercept covered recently, the Justice Department and the FBI, at the prodding of corporate interests and lobbying through the ‘90s, seized on post-9/11 powers in the 00’s to make eco-terrorists public enemy #1.
Now, did the groups in question pursue illegal and dangerous means to make their points when they burned down animal agriculture operations and a ski resort? Yes, absolutely. Were they right to do so? No, not at all.
But was the FBI right to prioritize them as a domestic terror priority “over the likes of white supremacists, militias, and anti-abortion groups,” as Senator James Inhofe said in 2005 when speaking in support of the crackdown on eco-terrorists? Especially considering right-wing extremists and white supremacists killed 50 people in 2018 and at least 50 so far in 2019?
Probably not.
But sure, Mr. Martz and WUWT, it’s climate change deniers who are being unfairly attacked.
_____
Top Climate and Clean Energy Stories: