Global Warming

Conservatives: Global warming is Real. But So What?

Ross Douthat publishes the fallback position of conservatives who oppose doing anything about climate change. This second-resort argument has been predictable since the 1980s, when Forbes magazine and Pat Michaels were trying to impugn science showing that global warming was a threat. OK, they were wrong, conservatives are saying. But it doesn’t matter. But the [...]

Ross Douthat publishes the fallback position of conservatives who oppose doing anything about climate change. This second-resort argument has been predictable since the 1980s, when Forbes magazine and Pat Michaels were trying to impugn science showing that global warming was a threat. OK, they were wrong, conservatives are saying. But it doesn’t matter.

But the evidence that carbon emissions are altering the planet’s ecology is too convincing to ignore. Conservatives who dismiss climate change as a hoax are making a spectacle of their ignorance.

But this doesn’t mean that we should mourn the death of cap-and-trade. It’s possible that the best thing to do about a warming earth — for now, at least — is relatively little.

Incredible stuff. The planet’s ecology is being altered but we shouldn’t do anything. By this logic we shouldn’t have done anything about chlorofluorocarbons eating the ozone layer, either. The people who thought global warming is a hoax were wrong. So are the people who think we don’t need to do something about it. Ross Douthat is young enough that I predict he will someday regret this column.