Re “Planet on the ballot” (Paul Krugman, March 1): I enjoyed the column but could not help but find a fly in the ointment. There is a notional inaccuracy in maintaining that the fate of the planet is at stake. The Earth has survived the impact of large asteroids, years of total darkness and several ice ages. It will surely survive man-made global warming, as it has survived catastrophes of even greater magnitude. It has existed for billions of years, and it could surely last for another few billion, even if mankind manages to make it uninhabitable for humans or other life forms. What is at stake right now is not the fate of the planet but the fate of humanity.
Karl Heinz Siber, Sachsenheim, Germany
Note from KBJ: Global warming is a hoax. But suppose (for the sake of discussion, analysis, and argument, as we philosophers are wont to say) that it's true. The normative question is what, if anything, we humans (or we Americans) ought to do about it. One option is to do nothing, on the ground that a warmer globe produces more good than bad. Why is there so little discussion of this option? Don't more people (and animals) suffer from cold than from heat? Don't more people (and animals) die from cold than from heat?
The explanation of the hoax is simple. Progressives want to control people's lives. They always have and they always will. What better way to do this than to convince people that, without massive intervention by government, all are doomed? Please don't say that it's scientists rather than progressives who are claiming that the globe is warming. The classes are not mutually exclusive. I suspect that at least 75% of global-warming scientists, and maybe as many as 90%, are progressives. They are progressive ideologues first and scientists second, which is to say that they are not scientists at all. (A scientist puts truth above all else.)
