IF the USA doesn't lead, there will be no progress on climate change.  It's not just our emissions--though they are considerable, especially per capita--it's our national attitude towards the crisis that causes the trouble. 

Since WWII. it's been an article of faith in the American main stream that the US is the world's "one essential nation". If anything, this has been a bedrock conservative view, underpinning, for instance, the "coalition of the willing" in Gulf War I and Bush II's Iraq War.

It's only on climate change that conservatives dismiss this otherwise undeniable American singularity. Why is that?  This is what Krugman want to know. How does this unaccountable thing happen.?