Krugman: The Year We Doom Civilization?

Paul Krugman asks: Is this the year we doom civilization? Because it’s come to that.

Krugman?

Paul Krugman: famous academic economist (MIT, Yale, Princeton, now CUNY), Nobel laureate, and former New York Times columnist (until the pusillanimous editors began watering down his columns). He’s now on Substack (which, as a platform, is sometimes regrettable and sometimes readable). His latest ^[1] is about our generally stupidity around green energy, preferring to subsidize fossil fuels that feed the greed of our oligarchs.

It’s actually enough to doom civilization: a bad version of climate change, which is where we are determinedly headed, would collapse agriculture, ignite more pandemics, and flood coastal cities worldwide. Between the famine, deadly heat waves, pandemics, and worldwide depression, that could end our civilization.

No, I mean that: literally.

Doom 1: Economic Stupidity

A lot of it is frustrating because it’s economically stupid to avoid green energy and the shutdown of fossil fuel extraction.

Green energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels, as shown in this graph Krugman exhibits from the International Renewable Energy Agency. ^[2] Over the last decade and a half, we have had quite a series of miracles happen in solar and wind energy. As you can see, green energy in all forms is comparable to fossil energy, and in most cases cheaper. (The only near tie involves solar concentrators, which take huge expensive mirror arrays. Even they are comparable to fossil fuels. (NB: “LCOE” on the vertical axis is the “levelized cost of energy”, i.e., fairly accounting for the cost of building and operating facilities.)

The only conclusion a reasonable person can draw is that there remains no reason whatsoever to continue fossil fuel production and consumption.

However… fossil fuels accrue wealth to the incumbent corporations and the oligarchs who own them. They would very much prefer to keep their high status, regardless of costs to the public. And in our wounded political system, they can just buy a government of Republicans who will do just that: support existing private wealth concentrations over public wealth.

There are no subsidies needed for green energy any more, just get out of the way and stop subsidizing oil! Unfortunately, as Krugman cites in this article from the Houston Chronicle ^[3], our politicians are extremely hostile to that idea:

Texas Republicans are getting closer than ever to killing the state’s renewable energy boom, according to the clean energy industry — not only by halting new development in its tracks, but also by possibly sending scores of existing projects to an early grave.

At the same time, we can see that the market sees through this political charade. One need only look at the growth of installed capacity for green energy over the years. Wind and solar capacity is clearly expanding rapidly (possibly exponentially, but I haven’t tested that statistically). This is happening on a scale of trillion-BTU levels, i.e., The Big Time.

It’s just all so stupid: we could all be prosperous and secure with green energy, or we cold keep paying oligarchs to ruin climate, collapse agriculture, and flood coastal cities worldwide.

Krugman summarizes the naked irrationality of it all in the Republican mind:

Why does MAGA hate renewables? They consider them woke because they help fight climate change, which they insist is a hoax. And they’re cleaner than burning fossil fuels, which means that they aren’t manly.

The choice is obvious to all but the rich and the conservatives.

Doom 2: Incumbent Political Spending

Just in case you doubt that fossil fuel interests are backing Republicans in their attempt to destroy democracy, let’s look at their donation patterns. Using data from Open Secrets, Krugman shows us where fossil fuel money and alternative energy political donations go.

• The first bar chart shows fossil fuel political donations over time, with Republicans coded in red and Democrats coded in blue.
• Similarly, the second bar chart shows alternative energy donations over the same time period, with the same colors.
• Note the dominance of fossil fuels for Republicans and alternative energy for Democrats.

• Before you try to “well, both sides do it” to me, you should know that I will whack you across the face with a sock stuffed with clues if you try that!

  Look carefully at the vertical scales: the fossil fuel political donations to Republicans are 7x larger than alternative energy donations to Democrats!

This is clearly a case of private wealth concentrations defending the status quo, basically bribing their way into a compliant, but lawless, Republican government.

The Weekend Conclusion

This is not just a preference in favor of fossil fuels. This is evil.

It is of a part with the dismantling of science, the censorship of public health, the revenge against law firms, and all the rest. It is of a piece with the barbaric statement of DHS Secretary Noem, on the right of habeas corpus ^[4]:

Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country …

… at which point she was, thankfully, interrupted by incandescently irate Congress folk.

That is, she thinks this bedrock principle is a right of the president to deport people, not a right of the people to due process and against arbitrary detention. In follow-ups, she thought the president could suspend it at will when only Congress can do that, and only in time of domestic warfare (like the Civil War).

They’re destroying fundamental civil liberties so they can kidnap innocent people from the street to be sent to torture prisons in El Salvador.

All this to enrich the oligarchs and preserve their position.

Time to tax them out of existence, down to “mere” hundred millionaires. Also time for a Presidential Crimes Commission, to send the politicians responsible to jail, along with the willing thugs of ICE.

(Ceterum censeo, Trump incarcerandam esse.)

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Notes & References

NB: This post was started 2025-May-15, hence its date. However, it wasn’t finished until 2025-May-20, hence the late-dated references below.

1: P Krugman, “Is This the Year We Doom Civilization?”, Krugman on Substack, 2025-May-14. ↩

2: International Renewable Energy Agency Staff, “RENEWABLE POWER GENERATION COSTS IN 2023”, IREA, 2024. ISBN: 978-92-9260-621-3. ↩

3: C Hao, “Texas bills could shut down existing wind, solar farms: ‘I cannot recall legislation as damaging.’”, Houston Chronicle, 2025-May-08. Warning: This article is regrettably behind a wall demanding you drop ad blockers. ↩

4: AM Varkiani, “ICE Barbie Kristi Noem Gives Insane Definition of Habeas Corpus”, The New Republic, 2025-May-20. ↩