Paul Krugman is one of my favorite columnists. He seems to be frequently proved right (the Iraq war, the bubble economy, etc.), but of course is still written off by most folks on the right. I'm glad to see him on the news shows more often these days.
Today, as he does occasionally, Dr. Krugman wades into the issue of climate change.
Krugman brings down the hammer on the folks like our old pal globtrotting Sarah Palin (although he doesn't mention her specifically), in his column today.
The main point of the piece is:
It’s important, then, to understand that claims of immense economic damage from climate legislation are as bogus, in their own way, as climate-change denial. Saving the planet won’t come free (although the early stages of conservation actually might). But it won’t cost all that much either.
Eh! But what would Paul Krugman know? He's only a Nobel Prize winning economist.
And while we're on the subject of NY Times writers, in case you missed it, Tom Friedman had an interesting take on the subject of economics and the environment in this piece. And while I don't agree with everything he writes here (the nuclear power issue is something I'm really undecided on), the part about increaseing the tax on gasoline makes a ton of sense to me.
Such a tax would make our economy healthier by reducing the deficit, by stimulating the renewable energy industry, by strengthening the dollar through shrinking oil imports and by helping to shift the burden of health care away from business to government so our companies can compete better globally. Such a tax would make our population healthier by expanding health care and reducing emissions. Such a tax would make our national-security healthier by shrinking our dependence on oil from countries that have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs and by increasing our leverage over petro-dictators, like those in Iran, Russia and Venezuela, through shrinking their oil incomes.
And as I often write in these posts, I'm asking all Kossaks to get or stay invovled here. More and more evidence points to the fact that we're getting closer to the tipping points of climate change.