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.