Climate 411

This post is by Nat Keohane, Ph.D., Director of Economic Policy and Analysis at Environmental Defense Fund.

We just released a new report on how climate change legislation will impact the economy [PDF]. There have been many recent cost estimates, but ours provides something unique. To put the numbers in perspective, we looked at model projections in the context of government data on jobs, consumer expenditures, electricity consumption, and so on.

The models – all from highly respected, independent sources – don’t agree on much. But they do agree on one thing: the overall impact on the economy will be very small.  All the models project that, over the next twenty years, the cost of climate policy will be just a few months of economic growth.

The good news coming out of this study is that we can afford ambitious cuts in global warming pollution.

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This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

A new fact sheet on costs to U.S. transportation and infrastructure surveys the many ways that global warming will cause disruption and damage if we don’t act to stop it.

Published by the Democratic Policy Committee, the fact sheet gives examples of known costs in different areas to give a sense of what the total might be – and it’s big. Here are just a few examples from the transportation sector:

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This post is by Tony Kreindler, Media Director for the National Climate Campaign at Environmental Defense Fund.

Last week, two reports came out that look at how much it will cost to drastically reduce the pollution that causes global warming. Both used economic models to project how the growth rate would change. One used a realistic set of assumptions, and the other stacked the deck with extreme assumptions.

But both of them look at only one half of the real question. They ask “How much will it cost?” (Answer: Surprisingly little). But we also have to ask, “What do we get in return for that investment?”

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This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

There’s no longer any serious disagreement about our need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to stop global warming. The debate now is about the best way to go about it. Opponents claim that the cost of adopting a cap-and-trade system would be ruinous to the U.S. economy. Leading economists who have studied the issue say that’s wrong.

Now you can decide for yourself. Yale economics professor Robert Repetto synthesized the results of thousands of policy simulations from 25 economic models to identify the seven key assumptions that account for most of the differences in the models’ predictions. He then used this information to create a new Web site that allows you to choose your own assumptions.

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This post is by Nat Keohane, Ph.D., Director of Economic Policy and Analysis at the Environmental Defense Fund.

My February 21 post, CBO Report: The Real Story, caught the attention of the folks at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Last Wednesday, I received a call from Terry Dinan, the senior analyst at CBO who wrote the report. A little while later I got a second call, this time from Peter Orszag, the Director of CBO.

In particular, they didn’t like the attention-grabbing paragraph at the top that said:

…a careful reading reveals the report to be a theoretical exercise with no real-world relevance. It highlights the drawbacks of a version of cap-and-trade that no one advocates, and bases its efficiency analysis on a faulty premise.

I stand by what I wrote, as I’ll explain in a moment. But a call from the Director of CBO is fairly attention-getting, as well. Moreover, Dinan and Orszag are smart and well-respected economists, and my conversations with them helped to sharpen my own thinking. So I thought I’d explain a couple of points in more detail.

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This post is by Nat Keohane, Ph.D., Director of Economic Policy and Analysis at Environmental Defense.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report this month on Policy Options for Reducing CO₂ Emissions [PDF]. It concludes that a carbon tax reduces emissions more efficiently than cap-and-trade.

But a careful reading reveals the report to be a theoretical exercise with no real-world relevance. It highlights the drawbacks of a version of cap-and-trade that no one advocates, and bases its efficiency analysis on a faulty premise.

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