Peering over the edge, or, The Imp of the Perverse

Steve Benen is shocked by the results of polls that indicate most Americans are more concerned with lowering the deficit than with boosting the economy.

I'm not. Rare is the day when we don't hear some politician or pundit wringing his or her hands over the rising deficit and the interest we'll be paying on it (somewhere, down the line, when interest rates aren't historically low, they usually don't add). Rarely are these serious people called, as Benen calls the poll respondents, "crazy." As on cue, I just heard President McCain railing against the just barely passed omnibus spending bill, connecting a rise in government spending (that's non-defense spending, of course) with the fact that people are out of work. He did not explain the connection, but there you have it.

But it also points to the failure of economists and government officials to explain well why fiscal stimulus -- not deficit reduction -- is still needed to put people back to work. We're just not very good at it, and instead take it for granted that it's been historically proven, that economics does offer models for these things that have mostly been born out. That failure leaves a big hole in which Republicans can drive their obstructionist truck through.

Similarly -- and similarly horrifying -- according to The Guardian's George Monbiot, the number of people who don't believe climate change is leading to a warmer planet is actually growing. Monbiot says the denial industry sows much of the confusion, but he also laments the shrugging reaction of the client science community over the leaked or hacked emails from the East Anglia climate researchers. Of course they reflect trivial personal frustrations and the desire to make data coherent, responds the scientists. But it's easy to manipulate "climategate" to undermine the scientific consensus and underscore the notion that it's all a hoax. Truth is, as with those who call evolution "just a theory," "scientific consensus doesn't seem to sway many people -- in some cases a majority of them. In the face of that the science has to be rigorous and impeccable, so a stronger reaction to the contents of those emails needs to be taken by those who care about climate change.

Whether its economists and policy makers explaining how an economy works, or scientists and policy makers explaining how carbon emissions are going to cause incredible economic and political dislocation only a few years in the future, better stories are needed to be told, and we need to stop reacting to those who deny evidence that is before their eyes by slapping our foreheads and calling them "crazy."

On climate change, it occurs to me, we might start by stealing a page from the deficit hawks who've effectively convinced a great many people that deficits are "stealing our children's future."