See Paul Krugman at his best today at the New York Times. His topic is the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill, which narrowly passed the House last week on a vote of 219-212. Forty some Democrats flaked and voted against it. Eight Republicans--all in districts carried by Obama--voted for it--and provided the margin of victory.
Considering the situation, it ought to be astonishing that 212 members of the highest legislative body in the United States voted against it. Global warming is a fact. It is perhaps the most widely held point of view among scientists in the entire world. Yet, some weather man in Akron says God won't let it happen, and James Inhofe (R-Awl Bidness) calls him an expert.
I can't help thinking of Jared Diamond's books where he argues that the Easter Islanders and the Scandinavian Greenlanders both failed and essentially became extinct because of they were unwilling to adapt to their environmental situation. No doubt there was a significant faction of Easter Islanders who said, "We have plenty of trees. Trees are eternal. Keep cutting," or a faction in Greenland saying, "We will never change our centuries old way of life, and we will keep eating cows." Krugman says thus:
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.
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