What's the cost of NOT cutting carbon emissions to curb global warming?
That's the calculation that NYU Law School's Institute for Policy Integrity undertook in its new report on the benefits the American Clean Energy and Security Act could bring to America and the world – and the benefits far outweigh the costs, the report's authors insist.
To be exact, putting the climate and energy bill's controversial carbon reduction program in place could save the planet about $1.5 trillion in the next 40 years or so in avoiding the "social cost of carbon," the report stated. Those include the costs of dealing with rising oceans, changing weather patterns and all the disruptions that climate change is expected to bring.
Of course, exact numbers are difficult to project when it comes to such an uncertain topic as global warming. The NYU team used a variety of methods to calculate possible benefits versus costs, and came up with benefits ranging from $409 billion at the low end to $5.5 trillion at the high end.
Given that the climate and energy bill now being debated in Congress is expected to cost about $660 billion through 2050, the benefits are expected to far outweigh the costs in almost all the models, the report found.
The report's authors claim it's the first calculation of the potential economic benefits to come from the bill, which passed the House in June and now faces a tough battle in the Senate.
The bill seeks to reduce the nation's greenhouse-gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 and by about 80 percent by 2050 through a cap-and-trade system (see Come Get 'Em: Gov't Plans to Give Freebies Under Cap-and-Trade).
The potential costs of the bill, on the other hand, have been the subject of plenty of calculations, both from supporters and opponents (see Green Light post).
The Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration said last month that it could increase electricity costs by as much as 20 percent by 2030 and reduce the nation's gross domestic product from 0.2 percent to 0.8 percent by that year (see Energy-Climate Bill Could Boost Electricity Costs 20% by 2030).
