Politics

Responding to an encounter David Roberts enjoyed at a climate change event, Matt Yglesias writes:

You do hear with a frightening frequency people with green sympathies, up to and including Al Gore, suggest that global warming shouldn't be a "political issue." Drained of senseless rhetoric this seems to reduce to the view that "everyone ought to agree with my favored policies." And, of course, I think everyone really should agree with my favored policies. But, in practice, they don't. And so: Politics.

Inasmuch as there are tons of people in the country who do actually think this way about everything, I agree. But I think there are a few species of this mindset out there and they ought to be looked at separately. When Al Gore says global warming shouldn't be a political issue, what he means is that there should be uniform consensus that a). there is a problem and b). we should do something about it. He's saying that to Republicans. When, on the other hand, somebody like Republican Chris Shays says stuff like "climate change is a bipartisan issue, and it shouldn't be about politics", he's covering for the fact that his party wants to totally ignore the problem.

Matt's right. In practice, a bunch of very rich men want to pretend a whole host of serious issues don't exist. And so: politics. But one perfectly reasonable way of approaching those political impasses is to remind the naysayers and their supporters that turning real crises into political issues in the first place is corrupt and degenerate behavior.