The Energy Absurdity of the Week: New York Times Claims Exxon's Purchase of Pioneer Threatens Our Very Democracy

The Energy Absurdity of the Week: New York Times Claims Exxon's Purchase of Pioneer Threatens Our Very Democracy

[Follow me on Twitter at @EnergyAbsurdity]

In case you hadn’t noticed, everything with which some person on the far political left disagrees is now a “threat to democracy.” Whether it’s coal, or farming, or cow farts, or Donald Trump, or Putin waking up in the morning, or lack of snow at their fave ski resort in the Adirondacks, political leftists have reliable polling data telling them that they can make points with the public by claiming all of those things and everything else they don’t like somehow threaten our very democracy to its core.

So, I suppose it was only to be expected that the leftwingers who run the New York Times would go after ExxonMobil using this rationale. Because those leftwingers really, really, really don’t like ExxonMobil. The only real question was what form it might take on the formerly respectable news outlet’s paper and digital pages.

We found that out on Wednesday, as the latest NYT attack on Exxon came in the form not of the dreaded Sta-Puffed Marshmallow Man, but of a “guest essay” written by some guy named Jeff D. Colgan, who is a professor of political science and the director of the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University.