Capping C02 emissions costs 18 cents per person per day

A new report by CBO says cap-and-trade will cost 18 cents per person per day.

And a big hand slap for Nat Keohane (of Environmental Defense Fund) for saying the cost was just a dime a day.

Yeah, I take such estimates lightly and tack on a lot of uncertainty. But CBO isn't biased.

Can someone explain to me why this is controversial?

Update: One big thing getting in the way of climate change legislation is deciding who gets to count all the carbon, particularly the offset part, which will be complicated. It's a conflict between two agencies that love each other dearly: USDA and EPA. Conflicts and a culture of distrust between these agencies go way back. On some level I think it's superficial stuff. Farmers don't know or like the EPA but do know and at least feel comfortable with their local FSA guys. Anyway, it's funny how agriculture always gets in the way on policy matters much bigger than itself, everything from trade agreements to climate change.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nonlinear Temperature Effects Indicate Severe Damages to U.S. Crop Yields Under Climate Change

Image
It's been a long haul, but my coauthor Wolfram Schlenker and I have finally published our article with the title of this blog post in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . We've been told that it would show up on the early-edition website this week. It hasn't shown up there yet so I guess it will come out tomorrow [Friday 8/28], probably late afternoon EST. UPDATE: You can find the article here . We set out to develop a better statistical model linking weather and U.S. crop yields for corn, soybeans and cotton, the largest three crops in the U.S. in production value. Our major new finding is that (by far) the best predictor of yield is a measure of extreme heat: how much temperatures exceed about 29C (84F) during the growing season. The threshold varies somewhat by crop--29C is the threshold for corn. Below this threshold, warmer temperatures are more beneficial for yields, but the damaging effects of temperatures much above 29C are staggeringly large. A
Read more

Renewable energy not as costly as some think

Image
The other day Marshall and Sol took on Bjorn Lomborg for ignoring the benefits of curbing greenhouse gas emissions.  Indeed.  But Bjorn, among others, is also notorious for exaggerating costs.  That fact is that most serious estimates of reducing emissions are fairly low, and there is good reason to believe cost estimates are too high for the simple fact that analysts cannot measure or imagine all ways we might curb emissions.  Anything analysts cannot model translates into cost exaggeration. Hawai`i is a good case in point.  Since moving to Hawai`i I've started digging into energy, in large part because the situation in Hawai`i is so interesting.  Here we make electricity mainly from oil, which is super expensive.  We are also rich in sun and wind.  Add these facts to Federal and state subsidies and it spells a remarkable energy revolution.  Actually, renewables are now cost effective even without subsidies. In the video below Matthias Fripp, who I'm lucky to be working w
Read more