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Krugman: Get Ready for Climate Lies

Curbing emissions won't actually cost much

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Sep 25, 2009 7:54 AM CDT

(Newser) – If you liked the health care debate, you’re going to love the upcoming battle over climate change, says Paul Krugman. The House has already passed a decent bill, but the Senate battle will bring out “the usual suspects.” Some will keep insisting that global warming isn’t real. “But that argument is wearing thin—as thin as the Arctic pack ice,” which you can now drive ships through.

So instead, most opponents will argue that reducing emissions would cost too much. But those claims “are as bogus, in their own way, as climate denial.” The House bill would cost the average family just $160 a year by 2020, or 0.2% of income, according to CBO estimates. Opponents keep spouting more dire estimates, but they’re not based on competing findings. They’re based on lies. “The truth is that it’s relatively easy being green.”

[Images (2)]

[Quotes (2)]

Participants at an Energy Citizens rally in Anchorage, Alaska, to protest climate change legislation passed by the House and under consideration in the Senate, Aug. 31, 2009. (AP Photo/Al Grillo, file)

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman delivers a speech at the Seoul Global Financial Conference in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, May 19, 2009. (AP Photo/ Hankuk Economic newspaper, HO)

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The claim that climate legislation will kill the economy deserves the same disdain as the claim that global warming is a hoax. - Paul Krugman

The campaign against saving the planet rests mainly
on lies. - Paul Krugman

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COMMENTS

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Showing 3 of 43 comments

Aelius28

Sep 27, 2009 12:08 PM CDT

It actually reminds me more of earlier decades when the public widely believed that if pot is legal Mexicans will come to your house, rape your sister and eat your babies. "no it iz truu! i sawed a profeshunal man in a lab coat sai it!!!"

Aelius28

Sep 27, 2009 12:06 PM CDT

And yet, Webqueen, you cannot provide even ONE lie. Furthermore, do you really expect any President to speak for everyone? Do you expect any President to even speak for 3/4 of people? It won't happen, that's the nature of politics, one party wins and the other party changes its positions enough so as to garner support of the other half. You'll never find approval ratings in the 80s, and rarely ever in the 70s. It's laughably anecdotal to suggest that because you and your other high-school educated conservative buddies who can't tell Communism and Fascism apart happen to agree to disapprove of Obama that it is somehow indicative of WIDESPREAD disapproval. No, you and your toothless slack-jawed muppets with shit for brains speak only for yourselves.

Aelius28

Sep 26, 2009 11:59 AM CDT

In response to the second replier, dontlikeyou, it was never global cooling "before". Global cooling never had significant scientific support, it was more a media sensation. Secondly, nobody is talking about taxing anyone except maybe corporations for carbon emissions, and that's just one of the proposed methods for reducing carbon emissions. And finally, you pretty much destroyed any credibility or authenticity you may have had when you talked about socialists. United States liberals are overall so centrist that they don't even breach the left hemisphere of the political spectrum. The political spectrum in America is shifted to the right so far that even America's "left" is still technically "right". The American "right" is WAY right, but nobody even comes close to socialism as it's known in Europe. And so what if it did? I'm sure you enjoy someone picking up your trash every week, I'm sure you enjoy police, firemen, ambulances, and I'm sure mom and dad enjoy Medicare which is *gasp* socialism. You're an idiot.

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Krugman: Get Ready for Climate Lies