by Ryan Avent Jim Manzi has written the most sophisticated argument against comprehensive carbon regulation that you'll ever see. It's the best you'll find, and with it Manzi has managed to win over much of what you might call the smart conservative set--the Reihan Salams and Andrew Sullivans. Ultimately, I suspect much of his argument will trickle down to the troglodytes, who'll slowly abandon their increasingly ludicrous denialist positions to argue that climate change is real but that we don't need to do anything about it. As smart and as savvy as Manzi's argument is it nonetheless remains fundamentally flawed. And it's all the more poisonous for steering conservatives away from what might have been their next step--toward market solutions for warming, of the sort favored by most economists. But just what is Jim Manzi arguing, and why is he wrong? I'll point out just some of his mis-steps below.
