Comments on: Memo to media: New Brookings study does NOT model Waxman-Markey, and, contrary to the Washington Times, it finds strong climate action would NOT hurt the economy

By: Alex J

Alex J — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:22:21 +0000

K.L., if you want to be pedantic, the transition being sought is to a zero (or at least low) fossil carbon economy. Fossil fuels are the major source of accumulation, but clearly some will be used in the transition to alternatives. I think future generations might see that as a reasonable investment relative to today’s often wasteful usage.

By: Peter Wood

Peter Wood — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:23:28 +0000

“The Brookings Institution on Monday said cap-and-trade legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions would lower the nation’s gross domestic product in 2050 by 2.5 percent” — another was of look at this is that under the climate change legislation (and without taking into account the impacts of climate change), the time we achieve the amount of wealth that we expect to get in 2050 would be delayed by less than a year.

What the study does suggest is that total costs would be lower under a carbon tax increasing according to the discount rate (Hotelling’s rule). This suggests that there would be significant benefits if the price floor was increased so that it played a much greater role in emissions reductions.

By: K L Reddington

K L Reddington — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:41:40 +0000

http://greenhellblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/brookingscatbro.pdf

A page from brookings 2012 to 2050 shows a 9 trillion dollar tax.

reduce employment levels by .5% for the first decade. That is not reducing the unemployment rate. That is reducing the total employment or no less than a millioon people.

Robert Brulle Says:

June 9th, 2009 at 10:40 am
This analysis seems flawed to me in that:
1. It doesn’t count the type of economic stimulus a transition to a zero carbon economy would bring.

I don’t think a zero carbon economy is possible. It creates hundreds of tons of carbon to build and install a wind tower. Even eating carbohydrates activates a carbon economy.

By: MarkB

MarkB — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:51:13 +0000

K L Reddington writes:

“We have had good growth for the last eight years. ”

Actually, U.S. economic growth for the recent 8-year period (2001-2008)has been the weakest in about 60 years. You’d have to go back to the period immediately following WW2 to find a period of weaker economic growth. 2009 won’t help either.

http://www.bea.gov/national/xls/gdplev.xls

Back to the discussion…One wonders why hack sources like WaTimes would bother to cover a Brookings study. Normally they can get enough material for their message by quoting the Heartland Institute or what not. The purpose of distorting Brookings (or MIT) is to convince moderate and liberal Americans.

Does the Brookings study attempt to measure the true economic impact of doing nothing? This means much higher fossil fuel consumption (and more likely shortages as a result), greater national security costs, health effects of worse local environments, and of course the large problems of unmitigated global warming, which will have gradual effects over the long haul. I’ve found that because of the difficult of estimating these things, economic studies don’t make an attempt.

By: K L Reddington

K L Reddington — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:52:00 +0000

“If we do nothing, GDP in 2050 will rise from some $13 trillion today to some $28 trillion in 2050. If we eliminate the overwhelming majority of carbon dioxide emissions from the US economy in four decades, GDP will “only” be about $27.2 trillion in 2050. The country will still be “”"”twice as wealthy”"”". We’ll just have to wait until 2051 to be as wealthy as we would have been in 2050 without the bill.”

America is not only not wealthy. We have more debt than assets. Are they saying this will double? I looked at the chart of budget deficits. Insolvency is really easy to see.

The actuarial tables say our Social security system is severly underfunded. Maybe we can sell land.

By: Robert Brulle

Robert Brulle — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:40:27 +0000

This analysis seems flawed to me in that:
1. It doesn’t count the type of economic stimulus a transition to a zero carbon economy would bring.
2. More importantly – the BAU scenario neglects the real costs that we will incur dealing with the unmitigated impacts of doing nothing about global warming. Has anybody estimated the actual costs that we will incur just to build up dikes around key infrastructure, the costs of property loss, agricultural impacts, the monetary costs of the destruction of coral reefs, transformation of the rainforest into a savannah, etc. etc. ? I would suspect that if these costs were accurately estimated as part of the BAU, it would be way more economically beneficial to address global warming now, and that the best case for a growing economy is under a zero carbon economy.

Bob Brulle

By: K L Reddington

K L Reddington — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:35:53 +0000

The last quarter adjusted annualized drop of 5.7% isd not only not reflected, but it is assumed that it and an even larger Q4 08 drop will be covered by offsetting increased growth. A scientif approach would be to change the numbers.

We have had good growth for the last eight years. It may be 4 years before out GDP equals the GDP year ending 2008.
GDP is still going down. It is falling much too much.

By: Modesty

Modesty — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:29:55 +0000

There’s something really misleading about these kinds of graphs that are—as you point out—based on analyses that don’t “examine[] the tremendous economic benefit from jumpstarting the transition to a clean energy economy and joining the nations of the world sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avoid catastrophic global warming.”

Putting this caveat/criticism/information in words–pointing this out with mere words–does not outweigh the impact of the image. I get that this graph is supposed to say “cost=postage stamp.” But still.

Someone really does need to come up with some kind of powerfully visual way of representing this caveat in the actual graph.