Sheldon Whitehouse Claims Big Oil Has Been Giving 'Indoctrination Sessions Of Judges' For Decades

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) slammed the fossil fuel industry.

Transcript

00:00Well the funny thing about this conversation is that time did not begin yesterday and for years

00:08public advocates have been objecting to fossil fuel funded special trips, trainings, exotic

00:18locales, behind closed doors, indoctrination sessions of judges. For like 20 years now

00:28this is a recurring phenomenon and now we're hearing outrage about that same

00:36phenomenon when it's not all fossil fuel funded, when it's a group that has

00:43fossil fuel executives and attorneys on its board, but somehow this is the big

00:49outrage. So you know yeah I don't think judges should be being indoctrinated

00:54behind closed doors by special interests and I've been saying that for years but

00:59the experience of this is that the fossil fuel industry has been at it like hammer

01:04and tongs for decades and how to suggest that a group that has fossil fuel folks

01:10on its board is I mean this is an epic effort in projection and false

01:16equivalency. Mr. Arkish you wanted to say something a little further. Oh look one other

01:21thing the people in America don't want to see a climate solution as a proposition is

01:29simply not true. We have done polling that I have pretty good confidence in that

01:35says penalties on polluting imports like imports from China that are built with

01:46coal-powered electricity and have huge carbon footprints putting a penalty on

01:51that higher footprint because they're not meeting our standards. Twelve percent

01:54oppose seventy four percent support putting pollution limits on big

02:00corporations. You can pollute this much and then no more. Twelve percent oppose seventy two

02:06percent support putting a fee on big polluters to fix that economic problem that I

02:15described that polluting for free violates the fundamental law of market

02:19economics that the harms of your product should be baked into its cost. That fee

02:24ten percent of Americans opposed seventy four percent support. The problem with

02:30this issue isn't public support. The problem with this issue is fossil fuel

02:34influence in this building and I contend that that is what today is all about and I'll

02:43just leave it at that. Thank you Senator Whitehouse. One final bit of question.