Because that’s where we’re at with climate change generally and the House-passed, Senate-dead cap-and-trade bill specifically. David Leonhardt, who writes about economics in a way that even I can understand, summarizes the absurdity:

“Either way, most Senate watchers, inside and out, think the odds of a major climate bill are not great. And if this White House and this Democratic Congress can’t pass one, you have to wonder what the future of climate policy looks like.

“All the while, the risks and costs of climate change grow. Sea levels are rising faster than scientists predicted just a few years ago. Himalayan glaciers are melting. In the American West, pine beetles (which struggle to survive the cold) are multiplying and killing trees.

“According to NASA, 2010 is on course to be the planet’s hottest year since records started in 1880. The current top 10, in descending order, are: 2005, 2007, 2009, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2004, 2001 and 2008.”

The cruel irony is that cap and trade is a market-efficiency solution originally championed — back in the era of the first President Bush — by the party that now views it as another step on the march toward socialism.

“We live in a culture where the terms fascist and racist are thrown about, if anything, too easily and too frequently. Yet here is a man whose every word and deed is easily explicable once you know the single essential thing about him: He is a member of a fascist splinter group that believes it is the salvation of the Catholic Church.”

Writing is hard — writers say this all the time, and I think probably only other writers believe it. But it’s not nearly as hard, in my experience, as not writing.