Top 7 Keys to Global Warming Policy
by David Sassoon - Mar 10th, 2008
Yale’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies has created a new web site called See For Yourself, developed by renowned economics professor Robert Repetto, that answers the following question:
What will reducing greenhouse gas emissions do to the American economy?
Professor Repetto did yeoman's work to provide the range of answers. He examined 25 different economic models -- which project different economic impacts for the same level of emissions reductions -- and synthesized thousands of policy simulations.
The result of his "meta-analysis"?
He found that even under the most unfavorable assumptions regarding the cost of reducing emissions, the U.S. economy will continue growing robustly.
Best of all, Repetto allows you to see for yourself on the web site. He's boiled down the variables to a list of the seven key assumptions that drive the results. You get to plug in what you believe about each of the assumptions, and see how it affects the economic outcome.
If you ever wanted to play economist, here's your chance. Let that secret wonk inside you out and register your quantified opinion to questions like:
How likely is it that renewable energy technologies, such as wind and solar energy, will be available at stable prices and will be able to compete with fossil fuels once fuel prices rise far enough?
or
How likely is it that climate change will result in economic damages to the United States if U.S. emissions are not reduced?
Plug in your answer and view the results, presented as nifty bar graphs.
Why did Yale go to this trouble? Dean Gus Speth explains:
As Congress prepares to debate new legislation to address the threat of climate change, opponents again claim that the costs of adopting the leading proposals would be ruinous to the U.S. economy. The world’s leading economists who have studied the issue say that’s wrong. And you can find out for yourself.
Yale. Isn't that where the President got his college degree? You bet.
You can see W's transcript here. He took two semesters of an intro economics class. He got a 71 the first semester, and a 72 the next. It doesn't say if Repetto was his professor.
Wonder what he'll make of this new calculator from his alma mater.
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