When global-warming alarmists, or anyone else, say “The debate is over,” it usually means they’re out of arguments. But now some climate-change activists want to make sure they’ll be out of opponents, too — by throwing them in prison.
The latest individual to suggest such is European politician Angelo Bonelli, an MP who is co-leader of Italy’s Green Europe party. Outlet ANSA has the story, writing that Bonelli
said Thursday that he would present a bill to criminalize climate change denial, adding that he considers the Italian government guilty of it.
“Italy has become a climate hotspot with a growing series of extreme weather events that have caused major damage all over the country,” Bonelli said.
“Violent storms with the hail the size of tennis balls destroyed houses, cars and crops in Veneto and Trentino, injuring 110 people, while in southern and central Italy temperatures have hit records of over 40°” [104° Fahrenheit].
He said “this denialist, couldn’t-care-about-climate” government should reflect on the 10 billion euros in damage caused by extreme climate events in Italy this year, on top of the 5.6 billion the agriculture sector lost last year due to flooding and drought.
As alluded to earlier, Bonelli’s is not a novel idea. For example:
- In 2014, a Rochester Institute of Technology philosophy professor named Lawrence Torcello said it was time “‘for modern societies to interpret and update their legal systems’ to charge global warming deniers with ‘criminal and moral negligence,’” reported The Christian Post at the time.
- Echoing this just weeks later, Gawker’s Adam Weinstein insisted that we arrest and “punish the climate-change liars.”
- In mid-2015, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) urged “the U.S. Department of Justice to consider filing a racketeering [RICO] suit against the oil and coal industries for having promoted wrongful thinking on climate change, with the activities of ‘conservative policy’ groups an apparent target of the investigation as well,” related the blog Overlawyered.
- Later in 2015, pointing out that there were already people “calling for making ‘climate denial’ a ‘crime against humanity,’ holding public trials of fossil fuel executives for having resisted the truth and so forth,” Newsweek reported on how 20 scientists wrote a “Letter to President Obama” urging him to “Investigate Deniers Under RICO.” Obvious paragons of responsibility, one scientist backing the probe admitted, “I have no idea how it affects the First Amendment.”
- In 2016, TV scientist Bill Nye (“the Science Guy”) expressed in a YouTube interview the opinion that global “warming deniers are similar to corporate criminals such as Enron executives — and the government should consider jailing them,” according to Rob Waugh’s Yahoo Blog.
- Now-presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has recently won fans by opposing government censorship, advocated jailing climate dissenters in 2014. Likening climate “denial” (read: realism) to treason, he said that people such as “billionaire businessmen Charles and David Koch ‘should be enjoying three hots and a cot at The Hague with all the other war criminals,’” The Daily Caller reminds us. “In the same interview, Kennedy said that he ‘wish[ed] there was a law you could punish them [politicians who disagreed with him] under.’” Kennedy later moderated his position, insisting that he respects the First Amendment and that individuals should be allowed to advocate as they please. Corporations and think tanks opposing climate-change dogma, however, do not enjoy such protections and should be targeted for “corporate death” by state attorneys general, he added.
Really taking the cake, though, was Professor Richard Parncutt, an expert on the “psychology of music” at the University of Graz, Austria. He stated in 2012 that global-warming deniers should be executed. What’s more, he suggested that the “Pope and perhaps some of his closest advisers should [also] be sentenced to death” (for opposing condom use).
Perhaps under pressure from his university, Parncutt later apologized “to all those who were offended.” The academic later modified his death-penalty manifesto and wrote that he is “not directly suggesting that the threat of execution be carried out.” “I am simply presenting a logical argument,” he continued. “I am neither a politician nor a lawyer. I am just thinking aloud about an important problem.”
Of course, this is how it works: Academics “put ideas out there” — just “theorizing” — and demagogic leaders later implement them. (The poetic justice is that said academics are often consumed by their own revolution.)
Returning to greentopian Angelo Bonelli, his idea has precedents. That is, “the incarceration of six Italian scientists and a local magistrate for failing to communicate earthquake risks to the populace of L’Aquila, Italy,” The Christian Post related. “A 2009 quake killed 300 and left some 66,000 homeless.”
On our side of the pond, Bill Nye and others mentioned that lung-polluting tobacco companies were targeted for harming humanity, so we can do the same with climate polluters. These are yet more examples of why the precedents we set matter.
Humility and wisdom matter too, though. Just consider, to illustrate the point, the onus “Hangman” Parncutt puts on the pope for allegedly causing AIDS deaths by opposing condom use. While most may accept his premise (though not his draconian prescription), consider this: In 2009, top Harvard AIDS researcher Dr. Edward C. Green said that the “Pope is correct,” that our best studies show a “consistent association … between greater availability and use of condoms and higher HIV-infection rates.” How could this be?
Because just as with Covid-oriented mask mandates, what may work with a hypothetical individual may not work at the level of population. In condom use’s case, the false sense of security it offers leads to more irresponsible, promiscuous behavior, the explanation goes.
The lesson here is that most of our pseudo-elites have but a comic-book understanding of the issues. But they are quite adept at what really matters to them: Getting power, keeping it, and controlling others.
