Gore Derangement Syndrome

As many have noted, Paul Krugman posted one heck of a column today.

Once known an economist, Krugman has now become perhaps the foremost left-wing writer in the country today, not because he knows more facts than anyone else on most subjects, but because he puts them together so powerfully. To wit:

It’s in the interest of most people (and especially their
descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that
somebody to be somebody else. Leave it up to the free market, and in a
few generations Florida will be underwater.

The solution to such
conflicts between self-interest and the common good is to provide
individuals with an incentive to do the right thing. In this case,
people have to be given a reason to cut back on greenhouse gas
emissions, either by requiring that they pay a tax on emissions or by
requiring that they buy emission permits, which has pretty much the
same effects as an emissions tax. We know that such policies work: the
U.S. “cap and trade” system of emission permits on sulfur dioxide has
been highly successful at reducing acid rain.

Climate change is,
however, harder to deal with than acid rain, because the causes are
global. The sulfuric acid in America’s lakes mainly comes from coal
burned in U.S. power plants, but the carbon dioxide in America’s air
comes from coal and oil burned around the planet — and a ton of coal
burned in China has the same effect on the future climate as a ton of
coal burned here. So dealing with climate change not only requires new
taxes or their equivalent; it also requires international negotiations
in which the United States will have to give as well as get.

Everything
I’ve just said should be uncontroversial — but imagine the reception a
Republican candidate for president would receive if he acknowledged
these truths at the next debate. Today, being a good Republican means
believing that taxes should always be cut, never raised. It also means
believing that we should bomb and bully foreigners, not negotiate with
them.

So if science says that we have a big problem that can’t
be solved with tax cuts or bombs — well, the science must be rejected,
and the scientists must be slimed.

A good example of Krugman’s ability to synthesize was seen on ABC’s This Week (via TP) if which George Stephanopoulos led with a line that Krugman used in his column: That the Nobel Prize awarded to Al Gore was "designed to drive you — George Will — crazy."

Will in response went on to slime the Nobel Prize, and then to deride the risks of global warming, by claiming that only one percent of the American people thought global warming was the most serious problem today. But veteran reporter Sam Donaldson fired right back, rightly linking Will’s denialism to far-right Senator Inhofe, and adding:

George, not long ago, the vast majority of the American people endorsed
the strike against Iraq too. You telling me now that people haven’t
gotten on to this problem, as they should, is not to say that the
problem does not exist.

Gee, could the American people be ignorant about something? Is that possible? I think so. Heck, a McClatchy reporter recently walked around Macon, Georgia with a world map and a video camera and asked 100 people to find the United States on a map.

25 percent could not. ‘Nuf said?