A title I never thought I would write...

There's always something, isn't there, when corporate interests send out their marching orders to the GOP?

And, anyway, we've heard this song before. As I recall, the Clean Air Act and the Clear Water Act were supposed to devastate the economy too. How could industry possibly put up with all those burdensome regulations just because rivers were catching fire and kids were dropping dead on football fields in Los Angeles? And yet, the economy did fine. Isn't capitalism amazing?

Kevin nails the Corporate Extortion argument: if the Government doesn't do what the Corporations want, the Citizens will be condemned to abject poverty. The argument is based on the premise that, if faced with regulations that protect the health of Citizens, Corporations will suddenly stop wanting to make money and go out of business:

Jonah Goldberg AKA The Doughy Pantload in yesterday's LA Times:

Reducing global carbon dioxide emissions to 60% of 1990 levels before 2050, while China, India and (hopefully) Africa modernize, is inconceivable, ill-conceived and also immoral because it would consign generations to poverty.

Yep. That's your choice: accept disastrous climate change or pick through dumpsters for food.

Ezra Klein kind of agrees?

Well, maybe so. [Regulations] certainly wouldn't do much good for our economy or developing economies. But if there's a sick patient on your table and you decide surgery might kill 'em, that doesn't erase the fact that there's a sick patient on your table. If Douthat and others think that massive reductions in CO2 emissions -- reductions I judge fairly impossible -- are a bridge too far, where's the counterplan?

Not shrill, not shrill at all, my friend. Ezra seems to be engaging in the Beltway Liberal rhetorical tactic of strenuously avoiding advocating concrete solutions (because the subject is complicated and difficult and needs further study) while accusing the Right of not having a solution.

"When there's a will - and there is a fucking will - there's a way". I think that's a quote from "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels".