Gregg Easterbrook writes in yesterday's New York Times that "As an environmental commentator, I have a long record of opposing alarmism. But based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert."

This claim seems somewhat disingenuous. While Easterbrook initially (in his 1995 book, One Moment on the Earth) elicited some scepticism about climate change, he certainly isn't a new convert to the cause for the US taking action on global warming: in September 2004, in a Washington Monthly feature he said: "The sooner the United States puts its shoulder against the global warming threat, the better for the world."

Meanwhile, way back in November 26, 2000, in an interview on PBS Easterbrook described carbon trading as a "practical economic tool" that has "a much greater potential for reducing greenhouse gasses in the world." Later in the interview he says, "Carbon trading would have the effect of transferring American capital and technology to the developing world to make energy use more efficient there."

Another angle on the story - Prometheus "welcomes Easterbrook to the NSH Club"

Update (Tuesday 30 May 2006): A response to Easterbrook's article written by AEI scholar Kenneth Green was published in today's NYT (copied below in case the letter goes offline):

To the Editor:

Gregg Easterbrook's sudden climate-science conversion and call for greenhouse-gas rationing represents a small step forward and a huge step back.

Accepting the science of climate change has never been the real debate: there are, and always have been, reputable scientists, economists and policy analysts who accept mainstream climate science while arguing for affordable adaptive policies and additional research as the most rational policy response to the threat of climate change.

Kyoto boosters have tried to hide this "inconvenient truth" by labeling anyone who disagrees with them a shill or a crackpot, and insisting that science "demands" that we control greenhouse gas emissions. But science only tells us how things are, not what to do.

Greenhouse gas controls of the sort Mr. Easterbrook favors have been expensive failures wherever tried. It would be a giant step backward for the United States to enact such failed, expensive approaches to climate change. Kenneth Green

Washington, May 24, 2006

The writer is a visiting fellow, American Enterprise Institute.