Despite all evidence to the contrary, I for some reason still expect people with the supposed respectability of Paul Krugman to at least offer intelligent commentary. Even with numerous incidents that discredit it, the Nobel Prize still means something, right? Or at least one other than the Peace prize? Yet the latest column by Krugman is just plain batty. According to this lovely little rant, those who question climate change hysteria are not merely wrong, but are in fact committing "treason against the planet." We supposedly hate the Earth, despite the fact that all of us have to actually live here. All of this because we didn't support the "cap and trade" bill recently passed by the House.
What Krugman and others don't realize (in my mind due to willful ignorance) is how unintentionally hilarious and ridiculous they sound. Reading this piece I felt like I was reading a religious text, inveighing against sinners and heathens, rather than a measured opinion. In the minds of Paul and many others like him, this whole issue truly is a religious one, and overblown rhetoric has become sadly typical. In this very article the term "climate deniers" is used routinely, clearly an attempt at comparing skeptics to Holocaust deniers. That this practice has become commonplace in a place such as the New York Times shows just how intellectually empty the environmentalist movement is.
The truth is that the people who are really betraying the country are those who voted for this monstrosity on Friday night. They supported a piece of sprawling, oppressive legislation without even reading it. They supported what amounts to a massive energy tax that will affect every level of our economy. They voted to massively increase the size of government and the cost of living in order to support an unworkable, disastrous regime that even if successful would make a difference in climate too small to be meaningful. They continue to support unsustainable policies and spending that will crush future generations in debt. For all they speak of protecting our children from global warming, they look the other way when they pile on unimaginable financial burdens.
The true traitors, then, are those who vote for legislation without reading it; who continue the wasteful and frivolous spending; who continue to disenfranchise millions of decent, hardworking Americans; who continue to bail out giant corporations; who ignore our complaints and spurn us at every turn; who mock us and set us on the path to economic ruin. They are the ones who are destroying our future, and Mr. Krugman and others would do well to turn their ire on them, instead of on those who simply desire a reasonable debate about potentially life-changing "solutions" to a problem that may or may not exist, may or may not be human-caused, and may or may not mean catastrophe.