The whole disgraced eco-sphere of public broadcasting continues to prove why having its tax dollars stripped was one of the most spot-on moves Congress has made in recent years.
The Rhode Island affiliate of NPR and PBS, Ocean State Media, said the quiet part out loud by legitimizing attacking “polluters” who cause climate change. “What if polluters had to pay for the effects of climate change,” read the July 28 headline for the Possibly podcast with host Megan Hall and Nat Hardy, which is a co-produced by the left-wing Institute for Environment and Society at Brown University.
The entire gist was drumming up Democrat propaganda for an insane bill in the Rhode Island General Assembly that “aims to make fossil fuel emitters pay for the impacts of climate change.” Hardy praised the legislation as a “climate superfund bill. It’s a pretty new idea to address the impacts of climate change.”
Since this is "public" radio, there was no serious opposition quoted to this leftist push.
This sure sounds like a slippery slope that would lead every schlub driving a gas-guzzling vehicle to be on the hook for a potential climate penalty. The bill, called the Climate Superfund Act, purports to target “large fossil fuel companies” retroactively based on arbitrary estimates of emissions released over the past thirty years. Aside from the fact that such retroactive penalization would almost assuredly spike energy costs on consumers, there are significant constitutional questions involved. These include potential violations of the Supremacy Clause under federal preemption and the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Hall and Hardy didn’t address any of this of course, and just proceeded to carry water for the dystopian overreach. As Hardy propagandized:
If you caused the damage, you pay to fix it. And the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel companies are causing the more powerful storms, heatwaves, and other impacts we’re seeing from climate change.
Hall chimed in her enthusiasm for a state-level climate regulatory infrastructure: “Interesting! I didn’t realize states could do something like that.” If the constitutional problems are any indication, no they can’t, which is why similar laws passed by Vermont and New York are being put through the legal wringer via lawsuit.
Hardy alluded to the lawsuits as dropping a roadblock in Rhode Island’s ambitions, but gave no description of the major constitutional issues in question. Rather, Hardy lobbed subtle ad hominems at groups protesting the legality of the bill:
But we also saw testimony against the law, both from local groups, and from some national groups who represent the interests of oil and gas companies: the American Petroleum Institute and the confusingly named Consumer Energy Alliance.
What this makes patently clear is that if NPR and PBS want to continue pushing this kind of climate-obsessed nonsense, they can do it on their own dime instead of the taxpayer dollar.
