What an odd phenomenon. Joseph Romm declares Shellenberger and Nordhaus (henceforth, S&N) are climate change deniers. His evidence for this outrageous charge seems to be that he disagrees with their energy investment proposals. It's sort of like saying I hate the Yankees because your dog is ugly.

Why would an obviously reasonable and accomplished gentleman make an argument like that? I believe the answer is a political one: advocates for addressing climate change have wagered every ounce of their credibility on a simple political logic that goes something like this: first, we scare the dickens out of as many people as possible. Then, having demonstrated our ability to frighten seemingly serious, sensible persons by the tens of thousands, we holler at the millions of people who actually matter in politics, screaming that the experts have spoken and, roughly, all you dummies better start listening to us, or you're going to roast in hell-on-earth!

And if someone disputes that political logic, the claim is that they are denying the reality of climate change.

Sometimes, this political approach works. A roughly similar approach has cigarette consumption heading downward fast in many communities in the U.S. and elsewhere. Another generally similar approach kept the Cold War going for years, until Mikhail Gorbachev simply decided not to play anymore. And now I'm running out of examples. Oh, yes, I just remembered another one: precisely that logic (with some help from real deniers) has so marginalized environmentalist claims that they now rank in importance somewhere in the general vicinity of pesticide manufacturers.

My reading of S&N is thoroughly political. Perhaps their best line - the one that gets attention every time I quote it - is that environmentalists have been giving an "I have a nightmare" speech when they should have been giving a "I have a dream" speech.

The problem isn't that carbon taxes, restrictions, and the like won't work; if you could get them implemented, I suppose they'd work. But they're a bad political strategy. S&N make a serious political proposal; that public investment has political potential that anti-pollution regulation lacks. They're right, but then almost anything (including waiting for Goofy to return from Pluto and wave Tinkerbelle's wand) would work better than what we've been doing. The main conclusion I draw from S&N is that we need a more serious discussion about political strategies.

So, briefly, let me take a turn. Energy independence has enormous potential as an issue that could be partnered with climate change, helping form and motivate a coalition that could really pass legislation. To be sure, the natural gas liquifiers won't be on board, but they don't have a veto. Moving the issue in this direction makes it a national security issue. And, as we've all been reminded with the recent Sputnik anniversary, public investment in previously untenable proposals (like serious science education in the sixties) can be motivated by a combination of national security, elite opinion, and economic power.

Besides, Clinton, Obama, or Edwards is going to need a positive foreign policy program when one of them gets into office, since nobody is going to instantly pull the troops out of Iraq, and for sure nobody will get them out of the Middle East for a long, long time. This is a political opening, even if it resembles the current political logic of climate change not one blue whit.