In his latest column, Paul Krugman speculates on how truly bad thinking -- in this case, climate-change denial -- gets institutionalized politically and, no matter what information may pour out, simply cant be challenged. Were talking about a Republican Party in which climate denial was once a relatively fringe position making it, in our present moment and for the foreseeable future, a badge of honor. Im glad Krugman took this up today, since it is a genuinely shocking development (even though it isnt usually treated that way). Tom Think of it this way: Once upon a time it was possible to take climate change seriously while remaining a Republican in good standing. Today, listening to climate scientists gets you excommunicated — hence Mr. Rubio’s statement, which was effectively a partisan pledge of allegiance. And truly crazy positions are becoming the norm. A decade ago, only the G.O.P.’s extremist fringe asserted that global warming was a hoax concocted by a vast global conspiracy of scientists (although even then that fringe included some powerful politicians). Today, such conspiracy theorizing is mainstream within the party, and rapidly becoming mandatory; witch hunts against scientists reporting evidence of warming have become standard operating procedure, and skepticism about climate science is turning into hostility toward science in general. It’s hard to see what could reverse this growing hostility to inconvenient science. As I said, the process of intellectual devolution seems to have reached a point of no return. And that scares me more than the news about that ice sheet. nytimes/2014/05/16/opinion/krugman-points-of-no-return.html?hp&rref=opinion
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 13:57:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015