cont. 
... either (a) professional activists, (b) government bureaucrats, or (c) tenured life-long academics - all of whom pay no tangible price whatsoever for wrong choices in their day-to-day work lives, and have the luxury of worrying about things that don't really matter very much.  People in the private sector, however, have to worry about bottom lines, and utility bills,  and making the mortgage payment next month -  what happens to Greenland's icecap 300 years from now is absolutely irrelevant by comparison.

You'd think a smart economist would understand that ... :-/