Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse doesn’t actually don a porkpie hat while delivering his weekly climate change harangue on ExxonMobil from the Senate floor. He doesn’t utilize an oversized cardboard megaphone, incessantly twirl a cane, or even display an elaborately waxed, curlicue mustache. At least not yet.
But his performances are on par with even the most enthusiastic early 20th Century carnival barker — breathless, fantastical, dripping with hyperbole.
Throw back the tattered canvas curtain, though, and Sheldon’s offerings are just as bogus as any sideshow attraction or snake oil-infused tonic.
Sen. Whitehouse dubs his weekly rant, “Time to Wakeup.” And, perhaps he should take his own advice.
In a country that values the freedom of speech atop all human rights, you cannot find a more protected venue than the U.S. Senate. Whitehouse can say what he wants, even if it’s divorced from reality, and confirmed as such. As long as he’s on the Senate floor, he’s immune to charges of slander, no matter how outrageous the claim.
Maybe that’s why Sen. Whitehouse frequently unleashes Senate floor attacks on ExxonMobil that come across as reckless and unhinged.
Sheldon Whitehouse has become the mouthpiece of the wealthy elitist environmental class led by shady Rockefeller family foundations and driven by partisan Democratic state attorneys general who have leveled false allegations about ExxonMobil.
The witch hunt against ExxonMobil was hatched on the far fringes of the Environmental Left and is driven by one goal: prosecuting the company under an outlandish theory that it orchestrated a global cover up of research showing the impact of fossil fuels on climate change.
After spending months and pouring millions of tax dollars into trying to prove the oil and gas company was sitting on damning global warming data, the attorneys general came up with nothing. That hasn’t stopped the state AGs from continuing their pathetically partisan legal fishing expedition.
The problem for conspiracy theorists and their servile allies in government is that ExxonMobil for decades has been open about its research on climate change — publishing research that was, in fact, completely in accord with standard climatology. Where’s the big hoax in that?
Don’t take my word for it. Sheldon Whitehouse’s own Senate website features an information-filled letter addressed specifically to him by ExxonMobil in which the company asserts clearly that it “believes the risks of climate change are real and warrant thoughtful action.” It points out that as the largest producer of natural gas in the world, ExxonMobil has “contributed substantially to the overall drop in U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions over the past decade,” and then goes on to enumerate specific, tangible action by the company, over decades, including direct expenditures of more than $7 billion since 2000, to “develop lower-emission energy solutions.”
Please, someone, read this man his mail.
Of course, other public sources reveal that ExxonMobil has produced hundreds of documents on climate-related topics, including more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, and nearly a hundred patents for cutting-edge advances in emissions reductions technology and other related applications. On top of that, the company has participated in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its inception — in 1988 — and was involved in the National Academy of Sciences review of the third U.S. National Climate Assessment Report.
It’s no wonder the Wall Street Journal dubbed the green extremists troubling collusion with state AGs the “prosecution of dissent on climate change.” Georgetown University Law Center visiting professor, John Baker, Jr., declared the investigation, “so preposterous that it’s amazing we have to pay any attention to it at all.”
Most damning, though, has been the condemnation levied by a coalition of 13 state attorneys general — “driven,” says Oklahoma AG, Scott Pruitt, “by respect for the rule of law, rather than an ambition to use the rule of law to silence those voices with which we disagree” — decrying the use of “law enforcement authority to resolve a public policy debate,” because it “undermines the trust invested in our offices and threatens free speech.”
Not that Sheldon Whitehouse seems to mind. He continues using his platform as a U.S. senator to pull out his soap box and deliver his sideshow-ready speeches to throw bogus accusations at ExxonMobile while the “clean energy” companies and climate change alarmists that fill his campaign coffers gleefully cheer him on.
Drew Johnson is a senior fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization committed to limited, responsible government. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
