| Sumario: | A major rift has opened up between scientists and economists over the issue of global warming. To some extent, science and economics have always been very separate entities because economists have never been able to attain the predictive rigor of the hard sciences. However, the rift between the disciplines was considerably widened by the Bush administration's new energy policy, which is based on the virtually unquestioned assumption that the only way of maintaining the health of the U.S. economy is to considerably increase its supply and consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas. This policy simply side-steps the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that mankind may be courting climatic disaster unless it sharply reduces its burning of fossil fuels and generation of carbon dioxide emissions. Unfortunately, the administration's energy policy is based on a delusive economic theory that misinterprets the mechanism by which technological progress drives economic growth.
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