Jonah Responds

But not very convincingly. Here's the nut of it:

I think Ezra is desperate to misconstrue my point so that he can wag his finger and whine about mean and dishonest conservatives. My point was simple. The American economy depends on fossil fuels and the world depends on the Amerrican economy.

Jonah appears to cede the point that precisely none of his examples are particularly related to the consumption of fossil fuels, and thus his markers of American economic leadership would survive a drastic increase in CAFE standards. Even so, this doesn't much help him. He'd now have to prove that the health of the American economy relies on our refusal to, say, deploy a serious carbon tax, or vastly raise CAFE standards, or embark on a serious conservation effort. He doesn't prove any of those things because he can't. As economists believe a serious anti-emissions effort would cost us about two tenths of a percentile of GDP growth over the next couple of decades, his argument remains astonishingly unconvincing. The only interpretation I can see making sense is that liberals should show a bit more gratitude to the combustibles that made our economy what it is, but that sort of begs the question why coal-rich China and oil-rich Venezuela are stuck playing catch-up.

Indeed, Jonah undercuts his own point when he wonders if I'd be willing to switch our high-tech sector from coal-generated electricity to nuclear. I sure would, and by admitting that there are non fossil-fuel related ways to power our economy, he demolishes the point of his original post -- that our economic leadership relies on fossil fuels. Many thanks, Jonah.

Cross-posted at Tapped