I wonder how future juries might view the actions of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who, in full knowledge of the realities of climate change, continue to preach their gospel of denial in the service of Big Oil dollars. I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put this in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial - except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don't will one day have to answer for their crimes.

Mark Lynas block

There seem to be other similar sentiments out there, but I think the others are inspired by this quote.

In context, and not paraphrased through a partisan filter as 'A Global Warming activist has suggested this past week that "Global Warming skeptics" should be hauled before a Nurnberg-type trial', I don't find the quote nearly as extremist as the RightWIng blogs are trying to portray.

In the essay as a whole, the author excoriates the Competitive Enterprise Institute for its oil-company-sponsored climate-change-denial campaign, and expresses the belief that they know full well that their position is false, and that they're simply prostituting themselves for corporate money. You remember the campaign: "They call carbon dioxide pollution; we call it life itself", and with over-the-top lines like that, only the most gullible would fail to miss the attempted con job.

He may or may not be wrong, but that's not the point, when it comes to determining what he really said. Lynas is saying that those who willfully lie about climate change are doing extreme harm to all of humanity, and that such actions should be considered criminal, on a level with other crimes against humanity. If the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is correct, the consequences of failing to act--and of impeding action--will make every outrage committed by the Nazis and the Soviets and the Cambodians and Idi Amin et al, combined, pale to insignificance.

He has his position, and he may be wrong, but it's not the position the bloggers are claiming he has. There's no call there to outlaw disbelief in the reality of climate change, no call to punish people who sincerely, if mistakenly, believe that the climate is not changing. He's narrowly addressing willful fraud, whose consequences, if successful, will be horrific for all of us.

I agree with Mark Lynas.