Some People Believe Things That We Disagree With, Just Deal
Think Progress’s new blog, Wonk Room, is very, very good, but they seem to be making a mistake in trying to explain AEI envirohack Kenneth P. Green’s opposition to the standard environmentalist/liberal global warming policy agenda agenda as a function of AEI receiving money from Exxon-Mobil. Although these types of attacks may be good idea from a short-term, purely polemic standpoint, it does great injustice to those that actually believe that massive public investments, higher taxes and a bunch of new regulation are not the best ideas.
There are plenty of people that receive no money from Exxon-Mobil who believe these things. And their argument, on the surface, can be quite persuasive. After all, the impacts of global warming are highly uncertain and so it might make sense to focus on adaptation and coping technologies instead of preemptively decreasing the wealth of current generations with new taxes and regulation. After all, if we put off dealing with global warming and let future generations incur the cost, it’s better off for everyone because those future generations are sure to be much, much richer than us.
Now, I don’t buy this argument, but I also don’t think that Ken Green, Jim Manzi, Reihan Salam and Will Wilkinson are afflicted by false-consciousness either. Ultimately, there’s an intellectual debate about what to do about global warming, and ad-hominem smears of our opponents don’t exactly get us particularly far, especially because, as I’ve written before, the Manzi approach to global warming could be very politically popular, at least insomuch as it could damage the prospects for a more aggressive policy response. So I think we should take it a bit more seriously, instead of just saying “but, but Kenneth Raymond gave them a bunch of money and John Yoo has a fellowship there!!!”
