Here’s the story. Earlier in the week, in Copenhagen, a group of climate activists disrupted a public meeting of Americans for Prosperity, which is an astroturf organization committed to fighting action on climate change. At the time, Lord Monckton–a prominent speaker on the climate change denialist circuit–called the protesters,”Hitler youth.” That was bad enough. But the day after, Monckton repeated the offensive slur to the SustainUS youth delegation at their table. Note that this is a leading “intellectual” light among climate change denialists. He’s even testified before U.S. Congress
It is worth watching this video in light of Matt Yglesias’ thoughtful post yesterday on the morality of climate change debate. As Matt says, those of us who want to prevent catastrophic climate change are not just factually right, but morally right. Statements like this from Monckton are a calculated effort to deny us the moral high ground. It’s incumbent that we–not he–define the moral boundaries of this debate.