“I think you’re wrong about that. Wolfowitz on March 27 2003 testified before the US congress that the occupation of Iraq wouldn’t cost the American taxpayer a penny.”

On the contrary, you have made my point. Advocates of mitigation also argue that we can stop global warming for little or not cost.

Both of these obviously ridiculous arguments have the same point:

If mitigation or war is inexpensive, then cost won’t play a significant role in the debate.

Wolfowitz won because democrats made no serious effort to challenge him; certainly not before public opinions on the war were fixed; arguable not ever.

Green advocates have already lost. The cost of mitigation is front and center in the debate. A large majority of both parties have already disavowed any action on mitigation which costs the average American serious money (which it must).

Greens will be stuck arguing that the benefits of mitigation outweigh the cost. Its not any easy argument to make, even in the best of economic times.

BTW, I’ve never understood statements like this: “I’ve long been of the opinion that everyone knew it was about grabbing the oil but preferred to pretend otherwise” Exactly how much oil did we grab? How much did we need to grab to make the was cost beneficial? What concrete steps did we take to grab oil?

This grabbing oil thing has always seemed like a wild conspiracy theory to me. Is there a factual basis for it?

I’d guess that number is rather large and could, in time, end up being too enormous to calculate.

The public were actually sold on a no-cost war.

I’ve long been of the opinion that everyone knew it was about grabbing the oil but preferred to pretend otherwise and that if oil had not gone skyhigh in price then Bush’s approval rating would have remained high. Cynical perhaps but, when you compare gasoline price with presidential approval ratings there is an eery correlation and it’s incredible the number of past electoral campaigns that seem to have focused on gasoline prices. Perhaps a lot of people think that blood for oil is a good deal – as long as it’s somebody else’s blood.

This is the sticking point with the CO2 legislation, everyone wants it to be done without an increase in fuel costs. If they actually believed in their message then that wouldn’t be an issue. Scary that they approve of a permanent military presence in oil-states but a tax on oil to reduce consumption is an absolute no-no, despite the latter being ultimately far cheaper. But then again if the money didn’t really exist, was it actually lost? I wonder.

The Iraqi war is an excellent example of Roger’s point. The issue was never successfully framed as a question of whether or not it was worth the dollars and cents cost.

Instead, Americans focused on questions like these:

Is it the right thing to do?

Is it worth the cost in terms of American blood?

The dollars and cents cost of the war was entirely financed with debt, and Americas never really asked the question.

Had they been asked: Is the Iraqi war worth $10K* for each member of your household, the answer would surely have been no.

The issue was certainly raised by some, the public debate was never framed in this manner.

*Based on the $3T estimate from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846.html which, in addition to over $1.5T in hard costs includes soft costs such as the lost economic impact of soldiers who never came home.

Republicans who oppose the tax and trade can be labeled as protecting rich people just like they always do.

Never mind that the people who are enriched are the carbon traders. Never mind that the country will be made less competitive in international trade.

Or more simply as Obama has made clear, “words matter”.