Cognitive dissonance is defined as an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. Matthew Yglesias writes, “In the 1970s, many scientists felt that the planet was on an unsustainable course in terms of pollution…as Mark Perry from the conservative American Enterprise Institute points out these environmental policies worked and the air is now far cleaner”:
Yglesias then points out that the author, Perry, uses the success of environmental regulation to argue that environmental rules and environmentalists have failed. Kind of like proving that the Earth is flat by circumnavigating it. Now conservatives are saying that dealing with global warming is going to kill our economy while ignoring the fact that creating an clean independent sustainable energy future will provide jobs, investment opportunities, profits and therefore tax revenue for the foreseeable future. Of course they also ignore the fact that environmental protection did not collapse the economy and throw millions out of work. That was done by the unregulated greed of Wall Street and the big banks.
