Because economics says that Captain Planet is a terrorist, stupid.

I really like the New Yorker. I know expressing my admiration for the quintessential weekly of Liberal-leaning, self-consciously intellectual set may not be a radical pronouncement worthy of a blog post, but having just finished this withering book review of "Superfreakonomics," not officially subtitled "a rogue economist and his pen-wielding sidekick argue that man's greed will triumph over his will to live," I delight that there still exists a national publication that is willing to pee on bad ideas and not blame it on the dog.
In the review, Elisabeth Kolbert draws cursory attention to the disturbing trend among generally reputable publications to crowd around "new" or "bold" ideas like TigerBeat on a Miley Cyrus tampon (does she use those yet?). The authors of Superfreakonomics made their name (and quite a fortune) by being those guys, in their still-bestselling treatise on smart they are, Freakonomics. Now, I liked the book, and the Times Magazine article that preceded it hung out on my bedside table for a year, at least. It has a gripping principle: your feelings, common sense, and probably morals are wrong, and we have the data to prove it. The argument, little did I apprehend at the time, is remarkably libertarian. Usually, if we think we have a problem we are trying to control, the solution is to realize that the real problem is our ignorant (or innocent, perhaps) attempts at regulation. We are often stepping on mousetraps while the mice are at our neighbors (or at least, a statistically significant population of mice), and let's be honest, who likes to step on mousetraps?
What Kolbert's article does beautifully, but to a wrenchingly small audience (who reads the book reviews regularly? I was taking a crap), is expose the real danger of this line of thinking with regards to climate change. Gore and others' appeals to common sense, morals, and hard science has gradually forced the greenhouse gas debate into the mainstream, but as he acknowledges too readily, it's terribly inconvenient. Isn't their a hidden source of data that will prove that we have neither complicity or obligation? No? Well, if there's a market for it, whom better to turn to than the Invisible Hand? At least, this is what the Freak authors suggest, citing an oft-cited example of the threat of overwhelming piles of manure was overcome not by conscientious action, but by the coincidental switch to the automobile. However, their proposed solution is a little less Adam Smith and a little more "The Matrix part 1." Completely disregarding that their anecdote of success could easily show why simple, poorly conceived solutions actually lead to striking analogous scenarios of doom on a greatly magnified scale, they call for "geo-engineering," specifically, of the sort that involves blocking out the sun with sulfur dioxide (of acid rain fame) in a feat that mimics the effect of volcanoes. Don't worry: it will kill the robots, and then Jesus can help us emerge from underground.
The attractive part of geo-engineering is that it is relatively convenient. It requires few, if any, lifestyle changes that aren't engendered as reactions to rain that burns your skin off, and can be done remarkably cheaply. That is, for far less than the cost of an underground nuclear program, any ambitious country could solve global warming. As a Harper's article I can't find to cite points out, unlike reducing carbon emissions, the Superfreak solution can be accomplished completely unilaterally, even preemptively. And in the same infantile way toppling a reigning dictator in one of an unstable region's most stable countries can seem like a cheap and garland-drawing method of dispensing with "inconveniences," never mind what the UN thinks, so too can creating clouds of industrial waste to stop our pollution problem.
Why go all the way to Copenhagen to argue about who will set the mousetraps when you can make a bomb so easily in your bathtub? When you blow up the block, the mice will be gone. Just sign over your insurance policy and I'll take care of it right away.