The New Republic

Thank you for taking on Charles Krauthammer, Jonathan. You recently dissected his errors (lies?) about Barack Obama and health care reform. Krauthammer used to be at least somewhat of an independent voice. I recall in the mid-90's when conservative Republicans in Congress were pursuing an anti-flag burning amendment to the US Constitution, he wrote a scathing column denouncing that enterprise and he said that if this was conservatism, then bring back liberalism. He surely wouldn't write that column today. He has become yet another right-wing hack in the alternate universe of what is misnamed "conservatism", appearing regularly on FOX "News" to hawk his increasingly cranky views. Continue to oppose Charlie the K in your usual dashing way, Mr. Chait. A decade ago it was possible to have an honorable disagreement with Krauthammer. No longer; it is time to go the Swiftian route and make fun of his nuttiness. Thank God for the Andrew Sullivans of the world. They, like Diogenes, show the way forward with their lights. Krauthammer the ideologue is just one more dead end on humanity's road to a greater future.

- liberal reformer

December 11, 2009 at 1:52pm

lr, cranky is right. The older he gets the more miserable and cranky he writes, longingly aching for a past that never existed. As the era of Reagan and Thatcher recede further in the past, their glories will only multiply and everyone today will be found wanting.

- blackton

December 11, 2009 at 2:14pm

Senators who represent 36% of the people killing a bill IS part of the popular will, Mr. Chait. As you well know, our system being well known to all here. And let us see, in the coming months and years, whether the US signs up to transfer money to 3rd World kleptocrats. I suspect we might, in the name of climate change, for which sacrifices must be made.

- butchie b

December 11, 2009 at 2:20pm

butchie, but we have been transferring trillions of dollars to 3rd world tyrants for years now, and we do it to spite climate change. It seems to me weaning ourselves off of Middle Eastern oil is the greatest two-fer ever, no money for tyrants (who in turn finance people who are out to kill us) and less green house gases. Lets treat it as a World War. Tax cuts for hybrids, nuclear power, solar, wind, thermal, etc. you name it, lets spend those trillions in the U.S.

- blackton

December 11, 2009 at 3:02pm

There are good reasons to incentivize a switch away from dependence on foreign oil and to work to limit de-forestation, but that's about as far as it goes. There are no good reasons at all to empower an un-elected Federal bureaucracy to gut the economy on the off chance that doing so might someday mitigate somewhat a global warming trend that will most likely continue for centuries no matter what we do. We need the resources of a healthy, growing economy (including the innovation it encourages) to adapt to whatever the future holds. The success of the human species is largely attributable to our ability to adapt to nearly every kind of environment on earth. The idea of letting EPA bureaucrats decide the future of our economy because the earth may continue to get warmer, and that may cause more harm than good, is truly chilling.

- Robert Powell

December 11, 2009 at 3:37pm

Then what is Chait bitching about, Blackie. I'm with you and Bob regarding getting off foreign oil as a nat'l security issue. And we should eventually move to renewables when they can produce enough energy to matter. But anyone who thinks it's a good idea to let EPA regulate the economy in the way Dr. K described is daft. The popular will should be consulted, regardless of Chait's snark. Global warming is not a hoax, but it is severely overblown. What will humans do? They will adapt, as they always have. Al Gore notwithstanding.

- butchie b

December 11, 2009 at 4:16pm

True butchie; however the choice we have before us is how much it will cost us to adapt, and how much pain and suffering (as opposed to inconvenience) said adaptation will cause. It does seem a little airy to just say "oh, we'll adapt" when by definition, unless we depopulate the planet completely, we will obviously adapt. Adaptation is obviously necessary, it is not necessarily easy or painless.

- Nari224

December 11, 2009 at 5:01pm

Isn't adaptation what all the fuss is about? Isn't adaptation what Al Gore is bleating about? Don't we have to start adapting, and Now?

- henson1d

December 11, 2009 at 5:05pm

A fair point, nari. My idea of adaptation is no doubt far cheaper and less hurried than the true believers'. I'd feel a lot better about "global warming" if some of the same groups hadn't told me in the 1970s about the coming Ice Age. No one, and I mean NO ONE, can predict the climate 35 years or so hence. Gore pretends he can, and he is joined by those chaps from East Anglia U. Some lineup, that. We should get off non-North American fossil fuels ASAP, because it's stupid to keep giving money to people who wish us ill. Beyond that, wake me when wind/solar can supply 1% of our total energy needs, regardless of subsidy. BTW, if France can get 80% of its electricity from nuclear, why can't we?

- butchie b

December 11, 2009 at 5:23pm

Humans will adapt as they always do? As I like to say about literally any conceivable proposition, either (1) It will prove true, or (2) Else it won't. Could humans have adapted to the Permian extinction had they been around? It is highly doubtful. And though I am on board with the overwhelming consensus of scientists on global warming, I have observed too many times how people have "known" beforehand how things will turn out, only it transpires that they really don't know. Maybe there is something important that we do not understand about the dynamics of global warming or maybe there will be some factor or factors that will mitigate such anthropogenic warming. But perhaps the worst case scenario will come true. We just don't know and given the consensus, it is the height of prudence to act with the utmost alacrity to counter the massive amounts of carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere and the oceans. Only a fool would say that the threat is "overblown" and that moniker well fits the house conservative.

- liberal reformer

December 11, 2009 at 5:26pm

Also, I'm not sure I follow Krauthammer's artifice where the EPA and popular will are exclusive. Lets leave aside the fact that the EPA is probably one of the more popular federal agencies around (as people do like to be able to breath). How else is "popular will" expressed other than through the government, the relevant department of which just happens to be the EPA in this case? I appear to fear the potential predations of the EPA less than others here apparently. Mostly because I see the EPA spending a lot of their time (at least initially) cracking down on power plants and other polluters which would be significantly cleaner were it not for some poorly defined grandfathering clauses in our existing regulations. Simply removing these perverse incentives (that keep aging plants going much longer than ever originally intended) will not only improve our quality of life, but will also lower the current artificially high costs of entering the market (where these dinosaurs are artificially cheaper than newer installations). Thus this change has the potential to actually be growth-positive.

- Nari224

December 11, 2009 at 5:28pm

And here in this thread we have the conservative approach to the climate crisis perfectly summarized. Out of one corner of his mouth, the typical conservative cries, "Adapting to the climate crisis will gut the economy!" And out of the other corner of his mouth, the conservative mutters, "Anyway, it will be cheap and easy to adapt to the climate crisis." What truly mystifies me is the contempt that conservatives show for American business. Every ounce of carbon emitted by human industry is waste. Reducing waste by definition increases efficiency. It is a sign of the desperate stupidity of modern conservatism that many conservatives honestly believe that increasing the efficiency of production would doom the economy. Every argument they make against the "expense" of moving away from a carbon energy infrastructure could have been made in 1988 against the "expense" of switching to a networked communications infrastructure. Think of all the businesses that will be bankrupted by having to replace their mechanical cash registers with networked POS computers! Someone save us from the wealth-destroying monster that is the government-created internet!

- rhubarbs

December 11, 2009 at 5:43pm

I don't think anyone anywhere decried the "expense" of improving our communications. I agree that minus distorting subsidies industry will on its own increase efficiency. The problem with leftists is that they always, no matter the evidence, insist that government bureaucrats can make things more efficient than free people. Did the collectivization of agriculture make Soviet food production more efficient?

- Robert Powell

December 12, 2009 at 1:56am

Apparently RP has never heard of externalities. Currently, there are no incentives to keep companies and individuals from pumping huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and oceans. Invoking the late, unlamented Soviet Union and deploying it in a debate on climate control is simply pathetic. Our country has a market economy and a democratic polity and policy on climate is a matter of choosing and tweaking options. There is no talk of commissars directing the economy. RP seems to metamorphose markets' tropisms toward efficiency into an uber-efficiency at all times, in all places, in all cases. Just another person badly in need of an Econ 101 course. The types in need of this are usually on the left but by no means always. As barb acutely noted, all CO2 is waste but markets seem not to have eliminated this noxious gas.

- liberal reformer

December 12, 2009 at 10:22am

"All CO2 is waste"?? Lib ref appears badly in need of a Botany 101 course... As for the economics, I was agreeing with rhubs that minus distorting incentives like those keeping old, dirty power plants operating, industry would probably become more efficient faster. I have a lot more faith in that sort of process than in the diktats of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in the EPA. In any case, acting as if we're facing another Permian extinction is the sort of panic-mongering that's likely to cause more backlash than carbon emissions reduction. After CO2 the number one villian on the warming hysterics' bad list is methane. It would probably be a lot better for the economy as we gradually reduce our dependence on carbon energy we harness the latent energy potential of mammalian flatulence.

- Robert Powell

December 12, 2009 at 11:10am

Note. people, that RP talks about "warming hysterics". This would include a huge slab of climate scientists, climate modelers, geophysicists, etc. I am not one bit hysterical and neither are the vast majority of scientists. The evidence is mounting that anthropogenic CO2 production is raising temperatures across the globe and that it will likely have dire consequences. I can just see it now - if the dotty RP (and humankind) had been around in the Permian, he would have been screaming for the hysterics who predicted doom to just shut up.

- liberal reformer

December 12, 2009 at 3:07pm

This is no transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor. Poor countries are the ones who will feel most drastically the consequences of a global warming for which they were not responsible for. US and the EU are responsible for more than 50% of the emissions, they have less than 20% of the world population (the US alone is responsible for 35% of the emissions) and they will suffer much less from global warming than third world countries. It's only fair that they reach a deal in which they are compelled to reduce emissions or otherwise pay for emission reduction measures abroad. And on this Krautsomething revisionism, well, it's laughable. How much feel good garbage Americans are able to take is what astonishes me.

- luispc

December 13, 2009 at 3:36am

The Third World badly needs development, and the only way it's going to get it in the short run is by catching up to the developed world in emissions, unless some new technology allows them to leap-frog as some have with communications. If you are expecting the rich countries to empoverish themselves in order to be "fair", luis, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in buying. The problem with the hysteria surrounding this issue (Permian extinction! The sky is falling!) is that it tends to alienate people of more moderate concern. I believe the science that says the earth is warming, and that people's activities probably are at least a part of the explanation. I also believe, per Lundberg, that there are a lot of other issues relating to Third World poverty that are killing a lot more people, and that we should try to be efficient in evaluating and prioritizing our responses. It makes no sense to me to levy a giant tax on practically all of our economic activity during a recession before we even have legitimate alternatives. In the mean time, some say tropical deforestation is THE major cause of excess CO2. Let's see if we can do something about that. Oh, and about cow farts too.

- Robert Powell

December 14, 2009 at 11:53am

"If you are expecting the rich countries to empoverish themselves in order to be "fair", luis, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in buying." Come on Robert, this is hardly a fair description. Rich countries only pay if they don't reduce emissions, reaching attainable goals. And that money, if eventually paid (and that only happens if previous compliance doesn't happen) is spent on carbon funds which are affected to carbon reduction measures under surveillance.

- luispc

December 14, 2009 at 2:48pm

Please, luis. You must also put a pricetag on what has to be done to reduce the emissions below the point of "paying". That's where the real costs reside. From the figures I've seen, it would cost many billions annually to reduce the rate of temperature increase, maybe, by a degree by the end of the century. The same money could almost certainly be better spent helping people adapt to a climate that's going to change no matter what we do. This issue is much more complicated than a lot of folks seem to think.

- Robert Powell

December 14, 2009 at 4:57pm

My apologies in advance for the following link. (I firmly believe that the "Comment" section should reflect the comments of the posters, rather than those of others we can all search for.) I am not sure how may here have access to the National Post, Conrad Black's Murdochian response to Canada's liberal (or Liberal) media. Any way, this used to be the home of Mark Steyn and now houses David Frum, and its conservative credentials are fairly credible. I found the following blog on the conversion of a skeptic on the basis of existing scientific evidence helpful. http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/12/14/jonathan-abrams-on-climate-change.aspx In particular, if you are not inclined to read the whole blog and its links (it's not that long), the following passage neatly (and sadly) encapsulates the debate on this thread. "AGW poses a direct threat to some forms libertarianism and right-wing capitalism. I think that this may have played a strong role in my personal AGW skepticism, and perhaps in other libertarians. ... Those who find regulations unpalatable, when faced with AGW, will have strong psychological pressure to find themselves in what I call the AGW skeptic spectrum: deny the existence of rising global temperatures, doubt the fact that it is man made, skeptical that cutting back emissions can help, and finally, question the idea that cutting emissions can help or is economically feasible." For me, it boils down to a question of insurance. I pay, each year, about 3% of my pre-tax income on various forms of insurance. (Not counting what I pay through my taxes for Canada's public health insurance; probably an additional 10%.) Last year I wondered about reducing my house content coverage (with the high deductibles, I thought, what good does the high insured amount do?); and then two friends had their houses burned down by neighbours' leftover candles. I'd rather not have my Canada burned down by leftover Chinese or Indian, or American, candles. RP: all the arguments about climate change costs were made in the 80s, around the Great Lakes, about acid rain. We managed to deal with it, cooperatively, when even Michigan realised that the situation could not go on. Lake Ontario is recovering and fewer historical statutes in Toronto are melting to Sulfuric Acid droplets - and the air is breathable again. There is no reason that we cannot do the same with climate change. The first step is not accepting the status quo as a given.

- icarusr

December 14, 2009 at 6:09pm

Hmmm ... the rest of my comment got truncated ... perhaps for the best!

- icarusr

December 14, 2009 at 6:11pm