David Brooks and George Will are arguably two of the most respected conservative newspaper pundits in the States. I like reading these guys as they are often a good read if you want a well reasoned conservative response to some issue. At times they dodge issues or slide into sophistry, but their columns are also quite often very interesting.
Unfortunately, I found both of their columns today to be quite depressing. Brooks decided to write a piece celebrating the fact that Americans seem to have no desire to live close to cities, but would rather live outside, in the exurbs, and commute. Brooks celebrates this, despite the fact that that structure is obviously dependent upon the car, and requires using huge amounts of energy to inefficiently move Americans between work, home, the supermarket and the mall.
George Will in his article seems to be echoing a theme that has come up recently: there really isn't any global warming at all, but rather global cooling. Actually, Will doesn't even argue that position: much like Brooks, he never seems to state his opinion at all. Instead, he just quotes other sources and other opinions, and avoids giving his own. One gets the feeling reading the piece that he doesn't think global warming is an issue, but then, it is hard to tell.
I guess it just doesn't strike me as fundamentally a conservative position to completely ignore our affect on the planet. We only have one, and many generations to come depend upon us taking care of it. And while there might be some room for error, it seems like the scientific opinion is pretty firmly pointing in one direction: the planet is warming and burning fossil fuels is the primary reason. It would be nice if American conservatives actually engaged with that issue, rather than pretending that it simply does not exist.
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