Except that for decades, the principal argument against acknowledgment of anthropogenic global warming (“AGW”) as a problem has been economic and pseudo-scientific. The chief villains in the story (to name only one, Exxon’s efforts since the early 1980s) have long put forth their own well-funded pseudo-science to claim that AGW is climate alarmism with no basis in fact, and that efforts to combat the problem would put people out of work. With each passing decade, as the deniers successfully delayed any meaningful climate action (and continued to reap profits), the problem continued to get worse.

Now, the denial industry is reaping what it has sown. The problem of AGW has grown to the point that mild, technocratic solutions won’t fix it anymore, and bigger, more fundamental changes are required. (You acknowledge the arguments of people like Naomi Klein on this subject, but have expended no effort at all to rebut their arguments.) To now turn around and claim that the expansive demands, economic and otherwise, of the pro-climate movement are politicizing what should only be a rational, technocratic discussion is the height of hypocrisy: simply another means to shout “Nothing to see here, move along…”