Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Corporations That ‘Sponsor Climate Lies’ Should Get ‘Death Penalty’

Katie Nielsen / October 03, 2014

In an op-ed published earlier this week for EcoWatch, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called for all organizations that “deliberately, purposefully, maliciously and systematically sponsor climate lies” to undergo the corporate equivalent of the death penalty.

“This can be accomplished through an existing legal proceeding known as ‘charter revocation,’” Kennedy wrote. “State Attorneys General can invoke this remedy whenever corporations put their profit-making before the ’public welfare.’”

He likens organizations that produce research promoting job-creating industries, such as The Heritage Foundation, to the tobacco industry:

Like the Tobacco Institute and CTR, these front groups are snake pits for sociopaths. Run by venomous carbon industry toadies, they stable a craven menagerie of propaganda wizards, slick biostitutes, tobacco scientists, snake oil hucksters, voodoo economists and other so called “experts” employed to publish beguiling studies, appear on TV and radio, and write deceptive articles critiquing the “flawed science” predicting climate change.

Unfortunately for Kennedy, this gate swings both ways. While conservative organizations may be the recipients of donations from those in the oil industry –although Heritage only gets 5 percent of its donations from corporations–those who are on the other side aren’t exactly working for free.

Two years ago, Matt Damon starred in “Promised Land,” a movie which vilified American oil and natural gas producers as greedy brutes poisoning American small towns. . In addition to “Promised Land”’s blatant omission of many facts, Heritage discovered something interesting about the movie’s funding:

While left-leaning Hollywood often targets supposed environmental evildoers, Promised Land was also produced “in association with” Image Media Abu Dhabi, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Media, according to the preview’s list of credits. A spokesperson with DDA Public Relations, which runs PR for Participant Media, the company that developed the film fund backing Promised Land, confirmed that AD Media is a financier. The company is wholly owned by the government of the UAE.

Kennedy’s knee-jerk reaction to vilify Heritage and its allies isn’t all that surprising–conservatives have been the scapegoat for liberal ire for some time now.

What is troubling is that  Kennedy refused to use turn the mirror on himself. If he had, introspection would likely have shown some inconvenient truths.