Monday, June 29, 2009
Krugman Vindicates Jeff Tucker
A while ago, when I was considering working for the Institute for Energy Research, I was talking with Jeff Tucker about climate change. He agreed that it would be a "hot topic" for a while, and so that I didn't need to worry about specializing in the equivalent of Betamax cassettes. Then he said, "Climate change is the Left's War on Terror."
From Krugman's NYT column today (HT2 Bill Anderson)
From Krugman's NYT column today (HT2 Bill Anderson)
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.
Comments:
Don't you know that the only acceptable methods for destroying future generations are through taxes and inflation? - ugh.
# posted by 
: June 29, 2009 at 11:00 AM
: June 29, 2009 at 11:00 AM
I'd say that someone who tries to make a serious point by comparing what they're saying to the hyperbole of "partisans" (because we know Krugman is not a partisan but is actually a member of the Fact-Based Community of Reality Observers(tm)) is a clown.
"Remember those other Chicken Littles? Well, guess what, the sky never fell. But THIS time, it's going to!"
"Remember those other Chicken Littles? Well, guess what, the sky never fell. But THIS time, it's going to!"
On the other hand, climate change raises some difficult fundamental questions (e.g., about the ethical significance of outcomes obtaining for future generation, appropriate conceptions of social discounting, the sources of legitimacy in global policy-making, collective responsibility when individual contributions to a worrisome outcome are negligible, the proper role of uncertainty in policy-making and justification) which I think are important even outside of the context of climate change. It seems to me that even if current concerns about climate change are overblown, there aren't many other areas of research in philosophy and economics that are as exciting and dynamic.
r.e. Krugman's charge of "treason" against AGW sketics.
It reminds me of the old quote from Sir John Harrington
"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
Global Warming theorists prosper and have the ear of the prince. They get to decide who is traitor and who is not.
It's all like the old (and libertarian) TV classic "The Prisoner". The interrogator, "No.2" says to the imprisoned free man "No.6" he'd like to make the whole world just like the totalitarian happy state the Village prison has become.
No.6: “The whole earth as. . . `The Village'?”
No.2: “That is my hope. What's yours?”
No.6: “I'd like to be the first man on the moon!”
(From 'The Prisoner' -"Chimes of Big Ben")
Post a Comment
It reminds me of the old quote from Sir John Harrington
"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
Global Warming theorists prosper and have the ear of the prince. They get to decide who is traitor and who is not.
It's all like the old (and libertarian) TV classic "The Prisoner". The interrogator, "No.2" says to the imprisoned free man "No.6" he'd like to make the whole world just like the totalitarian happy state the Village prison has become.
No.6: “The whole earth as. . . `The Village'?”
No.2: “That is my hope. What's yours?”
No.6: “I'd like to be the first man on the moon!”
(From 'The Prisoner' -"Chimes of Big Ben")
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]