Hubris and Substitution

A graph of US oil production

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman published an opinion piece in which he lumped The Post Carbon Institute together with the Koch brothers as representatives of "climate despair," claiming that anti-environmentalist right-wingers and anti-capitalist environmentalists are both wrong to think that we can't have economic growth without increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Richard Heinberg responded explaining how Krugman fundamentally misunderstands the aims and objectives of the Post Carbon Institute and how he either misunderstands or misrepresents the very reports that he cited to support his argument. Krugman then dug himself into a deeper hole with a second column in which he castigates physical scientists for thinking that they are smarter than economists. In this episode of the C-Realm Podcast, Richard Heinberg joins KMO for a discussion on energy, economics and climate through the lens of biophysical reality.