17
Feb
2016
Krugman’s Climate Alarmism Is Juuuuust Right
My latest at IER. An excerpt:
Again I point to the tightrope Krugman is walking here: He wants his readers to get on board, cheerleading these “green” power sources because they keep getting so efficient. Yet on the other hand, if the government doesn’t support them, everybody dies. How does that make any sense? If they’re really like information technology, it doesn’t take government favors to lift off. Nobody ever said we needed a “calculator tax” to get people to start using computers.
Well that’s what you would expect from a propagandist who is thinking on the margin. He needs to exaggerate all the bad things that will happen if you DON’T follow his advice, and then exaggerate all the good things that will happen if you DO follow his advice. Thus, we get the widest margin pivoting on this particular decision.
And yes, when this trick is used repeatedly it does open one up to someone going through old papers, “But you said it was going to…” but I think Krugman followers must be immune to that by now.