{"id":141755527,"date":"2009-06-29T16:32:07","date_gmt":"2009-06-29T16:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=141755527"},"modified":"2009-06-29T16:32:07","modified_gmt":"2009-06-29T16:32:07","slug":"betraying-the-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=141755527","title":{"rendered":"Betraying the Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New York Times Op-Ed Columnist  PAUL KRUGMAN<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nBut if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn\u2019t see people who\u2019ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don\u2019t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they\u2019ve decided not to believe in it \u2014 and they\u2019ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.<br \/>\nIndeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday\u2019s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a \u201choax\u201d that has been \u201cperpetrated out of the scientific community.\u201d I\u2019d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists \u2014 a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.<br \/>\nYet Mr. Broun\u2019s declaration was met with applause.<br \/>\nGiven this contempt for hard science, I\u2019m almost reluctant to mention the deniers\u2019 dishonesty on matters economic. But in addition to rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a point of misrepresenting the results of studies of the bill\u2019s economic impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low.<br \/>\nStill, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn\u2019t it politics as usual?<br \/>\nYes, it is \u2014 and that\u2019s why it\u2019s unforgivable.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/29\/opinion\/29krugman.html\">https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/29\/opinion\/29krugman.html<\/a>oldId.20090629163207242<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New York Times Op-Ed Columnist PAUL KRUGMAN &#8230; But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn\u2019t see people who\u2019ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don\u2019t like the &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=141755527\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Betraying the Planet&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141755527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141755527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=141755527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141755527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141755527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141755527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141755527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}