Lawrence Torcello is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology.
He believes in man-made climate change (I wonder if he believed in global warming, when they were calling it that – until so much of the planet was breaking records for cold weather).
A.P. Torcello recognizes that other people do not share his beliefs….and wants them charged with criminal negligence for doing so.
Do you find that hard to believe? If so, I don\’t blame you. So here, straight from his essay on the subject, is the proof:
Wehave good reason to consider the funding of climate denial to becriminally and morally negligent. The charge of criminal and moralnegligence ought to extend to all activities of the climate denierswho receive funding as part of a sustained campaign to undermine thepublic\’s understanding of scientific consensus.
Criminalnegligence is normally understood to result from failures toavoid reasonably foreseeable harms, or the threat of harms to publicsafety, consequent of certain activities. Those funding climatedenial campaigns can reasonably predict the public\’s diminishedability to respond to climate change as a result of their behaviour.Indeed, public uncertainty regarding climate science, and theresulting failure to respond to climate change, is the intentionalaim of politically and financially motivated denialists.
Myargument probably raises an understandable, if misguided, concernregarding free speech. We must make the critical distinction betweenthe protected voicing of one\’s unpopular beliefs, and the fundingof a strategically organised campaign to undermine the public\’sability to develop and voice informed opinions. Protecting the latteras a form of free speech stretches the definition of free speech to adegree that undermines the very concept.
Allow me to translate:
-“I believe in man-made climate change. Most scientists do. But some do not.
-“The scientists who receive funding to explore a view other than mine are therefore criminals.
-“I understand that some people might think my position to constitute a diminution of free speech…poor, misguided people that they are. Don\’t they understand that if my side gets funding for scientific exploration that\’s free speech, but if people who disagree with me get funding it is an organized campaign to prevent the world from getting an informed opinion – i.e. MY opinion, not theirs – and thus is not free speech at all?
I can just see George Orwell smiling in his grave and saying “Boy, I wish I had written that”.
Me? I just wonder if Assistant Professor Torcello can make – what were his words? Oh yeah… – “a critical distinction” between what he is proposing and what a garden variety fascist would propose.
If so, I hope he can explain it to me. Because I can\’t find any distinction at all.
And, yes, they actually pay this man to teach college students.
I wonder who else they have in mind for faculty positions. Dennis Rodman and Miley Cyrus come to mind….
