Last week I summarized the economics literature on the impact of climate change on human well-being. Or more accurately, Richard Tol reviewed the economics literature for the Spring 2009 issue of The Journal of Economic Perspectives. I simply told you about it and tossed in a few observations that I thought relevant.
In short, I reported that the peer-reviewed literature suggests that worries about some climate-induced Armageddon are probably misplaced. We will likely gain or lose a year of economic growth sometime in the latter half of this century from forecasted changes in the world’s physical climate. More than that cannot be said with much confidence.
Then, by coincidence, a study crosses my desk from the Institute for Policy Integrity at the NYU Law School. The study, titled “Economists and Climate Change; Consensus and Open Questions,” reports the findings of a survey of 289 of those economists the institute considers to be “the world’s top economists with expertise in climate change.” …
Even if energy realists and their allies fend off Waxman-Markey, wave after wave of global warming regulation could still sweep across the U.S. economy under the aegis of EPA and the Clean Air Act.
As explained in a previous post, the carbon dioxide (CO2) litigation campaign that begat the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision (April 2007) could shut down much of our economy and replace self-government via the people’s elected representatives with the rule of bureaucrats and courts.
Energy realists need to school themselves in this constellation of issues, because the clock is ticking. On April 17, the Environmental Protection Agency, responding to Mass. v. EPA, published a proposed rule concluding that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to health- and welfare-endangering “air pollution.” …