What is it with Gregg Easterbrook? Hope really springs eternal in this guy’s breast. And by “hope” I mean “delusion.”
First he argues that a second-term Bush will aggressively act on global warming (no word on whether he’s been reprimanded), which Michael Oppenheimer rightly mocked.
Now he’s back, in The New Republic, saying now, really, surely, Bush will budge on his energy policy:
John Kerry ran on a platform that called for dramatic changes in United States energy policy, and George W. Bush ran on a platform that called for keeping the energy status quo. Bush won, yet my guess is that change will soon win on energy policy. Too many trends are worrisome.
Gregg. Dude. What evidence do you have that oncoming catastrophe has any effect on Bush’s policy thinking? Will you share it please? Cause it might help me sleep at night.
The rest of the piece is pretty good, particularly as it draws attention to this report from Resources for the Future, a team of braniacs that do good work on market-oriented approaches to environmental problems, only not in that glassy-eyed way some other outfits are guilty of.
He concludes by saying that if this report doesn’t budge Bush, well, another upcoming report from the National Commission on Energy Policy surely will. He conlcudes: “One can always hope.”
Yes, Gregg, but hope, as they say, is not a plan.
