The Antiplanner wrote last Friday’s post in a rush after four days of dealing with near-record low temperatures, so it was probably a bit jumbled. Yet it set off a healthy debate that was both polite and instructive. So let’s continue a bit further.
On Sunday, Chris Matthews asked his guests — Dan Rather, Kelly O’Donnell, Helene Cooper, and Andrew Ross Sorkin — why it is that roughly 80 percent of liberals believe we need climate change legislation while 80 percent of conservatives don’t. Since Matthews and all of his guests are liberals who believe we need climate change legislation, they couldn’t figure it out.
The answer, as I was trying to get across last Friday, is that liberals believe government is good and they want more of it. The climate issue is just one more excuse to justify a bigger government. Conservatives believe government is bad and they want less of it. So, even those who agree that anthropogenic climate change is real are not going to accept that government has a role to play in solving the problem.
