Love what Krugman had to say about global-warming deniers:
...we're facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself. How can anyone justify failing to act?
Well, sometimes even the most authoritative analyses get things wrong. And if dissenting opinion-makers and politicians based their dissent on hard work and hard thinking - if they had carefully studied the issue, consulted with experts and concluded that the overwhelming scientific consensus was misguided - they could at least claim to be acting responsibly.
But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn't see people who've thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don't like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they've decided not to believe in it - and they'll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.
Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday's debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a "hoax" that has been "perpetrated out of the scientific community." I'd call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists - a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.
Yet Mr. Broun's declaration was met with applause....
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.
Of course, not quite understanding that Krugman was turning the right-wingers' use of the word "treason" against them - pointing out the hypocrisy of an earlier, hyperbolic use of the term for a threat that wasn't quite all that it was made out to be, by contrasting it with the same folks' laconic attitude towards an all-too real and present catastrophic threat - naturally the usual people went completely bath*t.
Mac: "...how can you look at a plan to save the planet and decide that it's too expensive?"
And Dan Savage has a d*mn good point as he mulls Kristof's column on the increasing number of male genital deformities and the ever-decreasing sperm cell count for which scientists think a certain class of chemicals found in "agriculture, industry, and consumer products" may be responsible. Savage:
Sperm counts are falling and birth defects in boys are increasing... and to address these problems we're going to need to change the way we grow food and eliminate certain chemicals used in tens of thousands of industrial and consumer products. These kinds of big systemic changes seem unlikely when you consider that making the simplest and most obvious changes to benefit the environment-things like banning plastic shopping bags-are nearly impossible, to say nothing of taking action on climate change. We're fucked. The planet is going to roast and our sons' penises are going to fall off.
And it's because of the selfish intransigence of consumers who threaten rebellion over sparkly dishes and the politicians that feed their ignorance and misdirect their anger. I mean, shouldn't these people be p*ssed at the corporations that put the poison into our environment, the businesses and ad agencies that conned consumers into believing that easy livin' was theirs for the low, low price...? Well, it turns out easy livin' does have a price. And the long-term payment plan is a b*tch.
|
