U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and 18 other Democratic senators have taken to the Senate floor to push a “concurrent resolution” denouncing the John Locke Foundation and a host of other free-market organizations and advocacy groups that have expressed skepticism over apocalyptic claims of the role of human activity regarding climate change.
The resolution officially “disapproves of activities by certain corporations, trade associations, foundations, and organizations funded by those corporations” to “deliberately mislead” the public “about the dangers of their products” — meaning fossil fuels, which JLF does not produce or market.
Using language once associated with Red-baiting U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisc., the Democratic resolution also demands information from these organizations about “what they knew about climate change and when they knew that information.”
As Carolina Journal noted in March 2015, when Whitehouse and his Democratic colleagues tried to launch a probe of the free-market groups, JLF was the only think tank that advocates policies in a single state* cited by the Democrats.
At the time, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, authored a letter signed by 10 other Republican committee members defending scientific inquiry and the free-speech rights of the 106 organizations targeted by the Democrats.
Keep checking with CJ Online for additional developments.
*Editor’s note: This story was edited after initial publication.