It’s Not Environment vs. Economy: Green Is the Path to Prosperity

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The day after the climate bill failed in the U.S. Senate, the New York Times’ conservative columnist Ross Douthat gave his take on the political-right and the climate in a piece that on the surface sounded reasonable. “Maybe it was best that the bill didn’t pass,” he says. While he displays some bravery in calling out the climate change deniers, who remain almost entirely on the right, for “making a spectacle of their ignorance,” he nevertheless himself betrays a much greater ignorance about what climate change means for us and our economy. Douthat espouses the dangerous idea that doing nothing to combat climate change is the best course for business and for the world.

In doing so he relies on a set of arguments against the pursuit of a clean economy that have little basis in fact and mainly defend the untenable status quo. The overall pitch has two main parts: (a) promoting a clean economy through the use of market mechanisms like cap-and-trade is a perversion of free markets, since the renewable energy industry shouldn’t need tax subsidies if it’s a real business; (b) going green will cost jobs and hurt the economy. Let’s look at both ideas.

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