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Fred Hiatt has amassed a collection of global warming denying and fossil-foolish columnists for the Washington Post. George F. Will; Charles Krauthammer; Robert J. Samuelson can be counted on to enter the fray with deceit and truthiness to clouden our understanding of energy and climate issues, seeking to undermine the building of consensus toward policies that will enable moving forward to a prosperous and secure climate-friendly America.

The distortions are mounting to such an extent that, with increased frequency, Hiatt is publishing letters and opinion pieces calling his ‘stable’ of authors to task, Washington Post staff are speaking out with concerns or dissents from opinions within Post pages, critical blog posts and articles are appearing across the globe, and Nobel Prize winners are stepping into the fray with devastating critiques of material published on the OPED pages.

Today, in another “faux and balanced” moment, the Washington Post balanced a false and deceptive Robert J Samuelson OPED with The Cost of Climate Inaction. In this piece, economist Kristen Sheeran and investor advisor Mindy Lubber, emphasize how discussions like Samuelson leave out a critical issue: the costs of catastrophic climate change. Any assessment of costs and benefits of action that do not address or account for costs of inaction, they state clearly, distorts the situation grossly.  They begin:

Robert J. Samuelson’s April 27 op-ed, “Selling the Green Economy,” was way off the mark on the economics of tackling climate change. It was a call to bury our collective heads in the sand simply because the future involves uncertainty — exactly the opposite of what we need to do.

Burying out heads in the sand in the face of climate action is a quite apt description of how Hiatt’s stable wants us (the US) to behave.  And, The Washington Post‘s political cartoonist, Tom Toles, who is perhaps the top major political cartoonist on climate issues, has done cartoons that expressly show this sort of heads-in-the-sand in the face of climate threat.

As for those ignored costs.

The real cost of carbon emissions is far from zero.

Each new scientific report brings proof of a changing climate that promises to disrupt agricultural patterns, set off a scramble for dwindling resources, raise sea levels, propel population shifts and require massive emergency spending as we try to react to the growing crises.

 These are the costs of inaction.

There are real costs. And, if anything, Sheeran and Lubber are understating those costs — but they only have hundreds of words, rather than hundreds of pages, to make their point.

This is an OPED worth reading, an OPED worth publishing. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the Krauthammer piece to which it responds.

Within this OPED are some strong words.

There is another impressive element:  the caution expressed within much of this discussion. Sheeran and Lubber caveat their discussion with words and phrasing that would be very unlikely to be seen from deniers and delayers. For example

The economic impacts on households, then, may not be as dramatic as some warn. We can mobilize the political will for clean technologies and emissions reduction

See the caveat words, the implicit doubt as to possibility rather than certainty? These are accurate words, the sort of ‘we can do it if we do it right’ nuancing that we are unlikely to see from the full-throated denier writings of a George Will or truthiness-laden economic distortions of a Robert Samuelson.

A smart climate policy can create a mechanism to put the right price on carbon, and rapid economic change will follow that firm price signal, along with reduced climate risks.

Can, not “will” …

We believe that honest accounting for the reality of climate change will bring a convergence of effort and interests, triggering change on a scale that will, once again, alter the course of history.

“Believe”, not know.

The weight of evidence might well allow more forceful language, but the nuance here leaves the door open for honest discussion as to what the best paths forward might be, what the best policy options are for dealing with the real costs of climate inaction. We can only hope, likely with little chance of realization, that Hiatt’s stable of global warming deniers and delayers will engage with reality-based honesty that could contribute to a real debate that would actually help move us (the US) forward toward more sensible energy and climate policies.

Note / Sources:

1. On other Samuelson pieces, see for example, Truthi-Samuelson strikes again, 30 Apr 08; J’accuse! Robert J Samuelson. J’accuse!, 15 Aug 07; J’accuse! Distorting reality in global warmings’ real inconvenient truth, 5 July 06.

2. Re Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman dissects Samuelson “I don’t especially mean to pick on Samuelson, but this column exemplifies a strange thing about the climate change debate. Opponents of a policy change generally believe that market economies are wonderful things, able to adapt to just about anything — anything, that is, except a government policy that puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions. Limits on the world supply of oil, land, water — no problem. Limits on the amount of CO2 we can emit — total disaster.”

3. Washington Post staff speak out and publish re The Will Affair

4. Links to 10s (actually, 100s) of pieces re The Will Affair and other climate/energy distortions within the Post opinino pages

5. Re Krauthammer, for example, Krauthammer’s fact-free foray into energy issues, 1 July 07

6. For another example of Hiatt publishing rebuttals, see Washington Post editorial board admits error in the Will Affair … implicitly.

Sigh, the list could go on …

Re Fred Hiatt’s management of the Post opinion pages, Dylan Otto Krider’s perspective on the “faux and balanced:

Will isn’t corrected because that’s the system Hiatt has intentionally set up. Conservative voices like Will are meant to “balance out” reality-based reporting, and provide a conduit for talk-radio nonsense to be mainstreamed by cloaking itself with the Post’s reputation for journalism — a reputation Hiatt is sacrificing by allowing it to be exploited this way. Once he imposes standards, the alternative-reality columnists like Will have constructed for their foot-soldiers is no longer possible.