It Is Our Great Collective Misfortune That

And That Is What Is Behind The Abrupt Rise In Climate Change Denial Among Hardcore Conservatives: They Have Come To Understand That As Soon As They Admit That Climate Change Is Real, They Will Lose The Central Ideological Battle Of Our Time—whether We Need To Plan And Manage Our Societies To Reflect Our Goals And Values, Or Whether That Task Can Be Left To The Magic Of The Market.

We Have Not Done The Things That Are Necessary To Lower Emissions Because Those Things Fundamentally Conflict With Deregulated Capitalism. ... We Are Stuck Because The Actions That Would Give Us The Best Chance Of Averting Catastrophe - And Would Benefit The Vast Majority - Are Extremely Threatening To An Elite Minority That Has A Stranglehold Over Our Economy, Our Political Process, And Most Of Our Major Media Outlets.

I Am Convinced That Climate Change Represents A Historic Opportunity On An Even Greater Scale.

And If There Is One Thing We Can Be Sure Of, It’s That Extreme Weather Events Like Superstorm Sandy, Typhoon Haiyan In The Philippines, And The British Floods—disasters That, Combined, Pummeled Coastlines Beyond Recognition, Ravaged Millions Of Homes, And Killed Many Thousands—are Going To Keep Coming.

Because It Is Such A Huge Crisis, Because It Puts Us On A Firm Science-based Deadline, It's A Once-in-a-century Opportunity To Build A Better Society And Address Raging Inequality, Create Huge Numbers Of Jobs, Rebuild Our Public Infrastructure. But, We Can't Do It Unless We Break Every Single Rule In The Free-market Playbook. Which Is Why The Worst People In The World All Deny Climate Change.