the cost of the Left being distracted by "Global Warming"

From Econ 101, we talk about "opportunity costs"-- the value of the next-best alternative, the one ignored by devoting resources to the perceived best alternative instead.

On the Left, the focus on Global Warming has come at the expense of some of its other favorite issues-- most notably, poverty and war. (That said, the Left is not much good on poverty and helping the working poor and middle class, so perhaps that's a net gain.)

Here's Lew Rockwell, elaborating on that point...

It might take a while to sink in, but the global warming cause is on the skids. Two issues are taking the whole project down: it is getting cooler not warmer and the email scandal of a few weeks back proved that this really is an opinion cartel with preset views not driven by science....It is no longer a slam-dunk case that we are going to have world central planning in order to control the climate and protect the holy earth from the effects of industrialization. Oh, and tax us good and hard in the process.

But you know what is most tragic to me about this? This whole hysteria led to a fantastic diversion of energy on the left side of the political spectrum. Instead of working against war and the police state, issues on which the left tends to be pretty good, instincts were diverted to the preposterous cause of creating a statist system for global thermometer management....

And methodologically, the whole thing was always nuts. If we can't determine cause and effect now with certainty, how in the heck will we be able to determine it after the world state controls our carbon emissions, and impoverishes us in the process? No one will ever be in a position to say whether the policy worked or failed. That is not a good basis for enacting legislation.

Meanwhile, the left threw everything it had into this hysteria....

The scary George Bush [supposedly] started war after war and kept them going to bolster his own power and prestige, creating as many enemies as possible through provocations and making up enemies if he had to....And what followed Bush? A president who repudiated this ghastly legacy? No, Obama is a supporter of the same wars and continues them, even ramps them up. Does the left consider him a bad guy? Not really. With a handful of exceptions, his critics on the left are friendly critics. They are glad to put up with this because he is willing to do their bidding on the climate change front...