The US House of Representatives passed a bill on Friday that aims to combat climate change. The word “landmark” has been thrown around a lot regarding this thing, but it’s still gotta make it outta the Senate alive. The GOP is promising that it will do their best to kill it there. The fight isn’t going to stay on the hill, though.
Paul Krugman wrote a column called “Betraying the Planet” that has gotten quite a response from the internet community.
He got Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard all riled up because said that denying climate change was treasonous.
Here is the passage that Goldfarb took issue with:
“Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?
Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable.
Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.
Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.” link
Goldfarb argued that of all the scientists he’s talked to about the threat of global warming not ONE of them said that the threat was existential. He also quoted one who said some wishy washy stuff, but the gem is his ending.
“Instead, relying on his own authority as a Nobel prize-winning economist, Krugman offers a vision of global warming as worse than nuclear winter — as if humanity hasn’t survived and prospered through repeated climate fluctuations. Krugman claims he knows how it’s all going to pan out — and that anyone who disagrees with him is a traitor to planet earth.
I’d bet my pitiful life savings that my carbon footprint isn’t one-tenth of Krugman’s, but if he wants to call me a traitor to planet earth, fine. Just don’t question my patriotism.” link
E.D. Kain of The League of Ordinary Gentlemen also took issue with Krugman’s calling people treasonous. He thinks that the cap-and-trade system is the wrong way to address climate change and compares it to indulgences in Catholicism.
“Like cap and trade itself, the passage of Waxman-Markey is an example of legislation as indulgence. Carbon credits, like papal indulgences, don’t actually limit carbon emissions anymore than indulgences sped one’s soul to heaven. Perhaps in theory they do, but in reality the concessions to industry are always too great, the compromises entrenching industry status quo and crowding out innovators and alternative energy start-ups.” link
John Cole at Balloon Juice is cheesed about Krugman’s linguistical choice. It was the quote of the afternoon over at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.
“There needs to be some form of one of the corollaries to Godwin’s Law that applies to the word treason, in that anyone who accuses someone of treason for non-treasonous behavior automatically loses the argument. Yes, the climate change deniers are, in my opinion, wrong, and yes, they are making all sorts of ridiculous arguments, but after the last eight years, can everyone just knock it off with the accusations of treason?” link
Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution thinks that the bill doesn’t do enough to address the problem. Nay! He says that he thinks that the bill, as it stands, woul be counterproductive “once the international scale of the problem is taken into account.” link
Free Exchange, the blog of the Economist, seems to think that these tariffs might be a strategy to get crackin’ on an international agreement.
“My impression is that Mr Obama is anxious to do something about climate change, yet realises that America can’t halt the process of warming by itself; it must have agreement on emission reductions from basically all of the world’s large economies. So perhaps the very imperfect Waxman-Markey bill is best seen as a means to push forward a global agreement on emissions.” link
Other stuff…
Here’s a great post at The Swamp that talks about Obama’s reservations about the tariffs proposed in the House version of the climate change bill and a good sweeping view of the other reactions on the hill.
Here’s the transcript of an interview that Obama did with a pool of reporters along with Carol Browner, assistant to the president on energy and climate change and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.
