Our Tragic Flaw

How refreshing to see in print, in The New York Times no less, the unvarnished truth--even better, from the wizened lips of Paul Krugman.

So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.

BUT

...212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

Hear, hear! At last someone in the mainstream is making this point directly! (Don't forget that you have heard this message here many times, for several years (I refer now to blog posts I wrote under other URLs going back at least as far as 2003.))

Krugman puts a further polish on it here:

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.

I wrote a whole book about this very phenomenon. It's called Our Tragic Flaw. You can order it here.