generally balanced\u00a0story by\u00a0reporter Juliet Eilperin<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe story is about the testimony of the head of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, who appeared before a Senate energy panel yesterday.<\/p>\n
The article points out that Elmendorf went out of his way to say the costs of\u00a0shifting to clean energy would be “comparatively modest” and that his analysis didn’t even include the\u00a0heavy cost of failing to take action to slow climate change.\u00a0\u00a0He estimated a very small economic difference under the clean energy bill over a\u00a0long period of time.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0headline writer summed it up this way: \u201cCap-and-Trade Would Slow Economy, CBO Chief Says.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is extremely misleading since many readers will interpret this to mean that economic growth would actually turn negative, which is absolutely NOT what Elmendorf said.<\/p>\n
What he said (and what Eilperin reported) is what\u2019s reflected in the CBO analysis \u2013 that the economy is expected to grow strongly and thrive whether we pass a carbon cap or not.<\/strong> If we do nothing, the American economy would reach $25 trillion by January 2030; if we pass a cap on carbon, it will reach the exact same size of $25 trillion by May of 2030 (and that\u2019s a conservative estimate \u2013 we\u2019d reach that between March and May). And, remember, that projection doesn’t include the economic benefits of avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.<\/p>\nWhat is confusing in the headline is that “economy slowing” has become shorthand for “panic, it’s a recession” \u2014 which is the opposite of what Elmendorf was talking about. What Elmendorf actually said is that a cap would \u201ccut the nation’s gross domestic product \u2026 compared to \u2018what it would otherwise have been.<\/em>\u2019\u201d The CBO finding was that a carbon cap would cut GDP \u201c0.25 to 0.75 percent\u201d by the year 2020.\u00a0Again, that’s a cut from what it would have otherwise reached\u00a0without the policy \u2014 not a cut from where the economy stands now.<\/p>\nTo put that in perspective, if you had to cut the Post<\/em> article by the same amount, you\u2019d need to edit out \u2013 three or four words.<\/strong> Or, to cut that headline proportionately you\u2019d have to \u2013 lose half the \u201cs\u201d on the end of the last word. That\u2019s a tiny amount, and certainly no reason to panic \u2013 unless you\u2019re looking for a reason to panic so you can try to kill\u00a0a clean energy\u00a0bill.<\/p>\nRead more in EDF\u2019s latest Climate Economics Brief<\/a>, Or read the CBO report itself<\/a>. And check out National Wildlife Federation’s comments on, as they call it, the Post<\/em>‘s “scare headlines”<\/a> \u2014 we’re flattered that they used an EDF graph to help make their case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It must have\u00a0been a late night\u00a0for one of the headline writers at the Washington Post.\u00a0That’s the best explanation we can think of for the\u00a0seriously\u00a0misleading headline on a\u00a0generally balanced\u00a0story by\u00a0reporter Juliet Eilperin. The story is about the testimony of the head of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, who appeared before a Senate energy panel yesterday. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Washington Post's Headline Got the Story Wrong - Climate 411<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2009\/10\/15\/washington-posts-headline-got-the-story-wrong\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Washington Post's Headline Got the Story Wrong - Climate 411\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It must have\u00a0been a late night\u00a0for one of the headline writers at the Washington Post.\u00a0That’s the best explanation we can think of for the\u00a0seriously\u00a0misleading headline on a\u00a0generally balanced\u00a0story by\u00a0reporter Juliet Eilperin. 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