Ambitious Climate Policy Is Affordable

Fig. 1. Five peer-reviewed economic studies predict U.S. GDP will roughly double by 2030 (solid lines), even with strong climate legislation (dashed lines). Full-size graph

Fig. 2. The impact of climate policy (dark tip of each bar) on total U.S. GDP in 2030 (the entire bar) is small in each of the five. Full-size graph

Ignoring climate change is the most costly and dangerous course for our economy (see last week's climate fact). But how much will it cost us to tackle the problem?

The United States can enjoy robust economic growth over the next several decades while making ambitious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. If we put a cap-and-trade policy in place soon, we can achieve substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions without significant adverse consequences to the economy. And in the long run, the coming low-carbon economy can provide the foundation for sustained American economic growth and prosperity.1

That's the conclusion of a new survey that synthesizes findings from several peer-reviewed and state-of-the-art economic studies2 on the impacts of capping greenhouse gas emissions on the U.S. economy. While these individual studies vary in their assumptions, they do agree on two things:

The 0.58% difference in GDP is so small, it's like two cars taking different routes from New York to Los Angeles and guessing that one will get there at noon on the third day and the other will get there at 12:35. That it is well within the margin of error of these models.

Don't forget that these forecasts ignore the much bigger economic cost of the impacts of climate change if we don't take effective action. And that delay both greatly increases the cost of making the necessary emissions reductions and puts the U.S. further behind the rest of the world in the race to invent and produce the next generation of energy technologies.

Climate policy is affordable. It's time to cap emissions.

1 Keohane, Nathaniel and Peter Goldmark. "What Will it Cost to Protect Ourselves from Global Warming?" Environmental Defense Fund 2008.

2 Models analyzed were from the Energy Information Agency (EIA), Research Triangle Institute (RTI), Harvard (the IGEM model), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories (PNNL).