That's what Paul Krugman calls me and the 70 percent of Americans who don't think "dealing with global warming" should be a top priority for the United States government:
Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn't it politics as usual?
Yes, it is - and that's why it's unforgivable.
Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an "existential threat" to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole - but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.
Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it's in their political interest to pretend that there's nothing to worry about. If that's not betrayal, I don't know what is.
Just to be clear: state-sponsored terrorism does present an existential risk to the United States in the form of nuclear weapons, which could genuinely destroy our system of government, our economy, our way of life, if not exterminate every last person in the country. Global warming, on the other hand...well, I've asked many a scientist about the potential consequences of global warming. I've never heard a single one tell me that the threat was "existential." For example, last year I asked Julienne Stroeve, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, to tell me what the implications of a melted arctic were:
Some climate models show reduced rainfall and snowfall in the American southwest as a result of the loss of Arctic ice. Others show more precipitation in southern Europe, "but again, these are climate models, and they're not perfect. . . . There's no real consensus now." Beyond that, Stroeve says, "I'm not really sure at this point how it's all going to pan out, because we really don't know."
A little less rain here, a little more rain there...but she doesn't really know. Yet for all Krugman's accusations about climate skeptics -- that they are "people who show no sign of being interested in the truth" -- it's he who isn't interested in the truth, just as Obama's EPA suppressed an "internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming." Krugman doesn't quote a single scientist to back his claim that global warming poses an "existential threat" to the United States. If Krugman was actually interested in the truth, surely he would have sought out the opinion of actual someone like Stroeve. Instead, relying on his own authority as a Nobel prize-winning economist, Krugman offers a vision of global warming as worse than nuclear winter -- as if humanity hasn't survived and prospered through repeated climate fluctuations. Krugman claims he knows how it's all going to pan out -- and that anyone who disagrees with him is a traitor to planet earth.
I'd bet my pitiful life savings that my carbon footprint isn't one-tenth of Krugman's, but if he wants to call me a traitor to planet earth, fine. Just don't question my patriotism.
