The indispensable Holman Jenkins today in the Wall Street Journal, urging climate worrywarts to grow up.

Growing up would begin with recognizing that science doesn’t prove the case against CO2. Our political system has been looking at the problem of climate change for a generation, and lack of action is not due to the machinations of big oil — but to the inability of policy to bridge a giant chasm between proposed costs and benefits. Even if carbon’s guilt is assumed, the economics are far from certain that it wouldn’t be cheaper just to endure a changing climate. Growing up would also mean realizing that climate activists are in danger of losing all political credibility as they become handmaidens to corrupt pork bonanzas for the corn ethanol lobby and Silicon Valley alternative energy impresarios. Look no further than the climate bill being debated on Capitol Hill this week. The only real question it poses is how much Congress will spend on climate pork while having no discernible impact on climate. Finally, growing up means recognizing that their one politically and morally saleable proposition is to offer carbon taxes as a de facto consumption tax, with the proceeds used to offset labor and capital taxes that discourage work and investment. This would be a case of taxing “bads” not “goods,” with benefits for growth and the average voter’s bottom line independent of any problematic evidence about CO2 and climate. Voters and their representatives then could at least contemplate supporting a climate policy on cost-benefit grounds, rather than on the religious posturing that Al Gore and others adopt to push what they can’t sell rationally. Will the greens learn these lessons? Not likely – which is why $135 oil may prove the beginning of the end of any political movement to do anything about climate change.