Pirate's Cove

Tell us all about it, Juliet Eilperin! New Report Details Costs of Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions

With enough technological advances, the world could get to a dramatically lower level of greenhouse gas emissions at a cost of between one and three percent of global GDP per year, according to a report issued Tuesday by a group of economists. That price tag is in line with previous economic estimates aimed at meeting more modest climate goals.

Eh. It’s only a 1-3 percent loss of GDP. Globally. No big deal. We can all live with walking to work, buying a smaller house, being unemployed, knitting clothes for our kids, right?

The authors of the report assumed that a doubling of carbon concentrations in the atmosphere would translate into an average global temperature rise of 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit, twice as much as what some traditional climate models have suggested. According to their analysis, policymakers could reduce carbon concentrations in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million by either 2100 or 2200.

Hmm, it’s sounding like those “economists” – and, I thought only climatologists were allowed to chime in? – have a bit of an agenda. That can’t be right, right? The media would never trumpet anyone with any sort of bias, right? Just who are these economists that wrote the report for The Economics for Equality and The Environment (E3 Network)?

Economists in the E3 Network believe:

• A clean and safe environment is a birthright of every person. It is not a commodity to be distributed on the basis of purchasing power, nor a privilege to be distributed on the basis of political power.
• Safeguarding the natural environment is inseparable from promoting social justice. Without a fair distribution of wealth and power, neither the free market nor government regulation will guarantee environmental quality and human well-being.
• Today’s environmental challenges demand new thinking. By engaging with real-world problems economists can help craft effective solutions and build a more just and sustainable future.

To these ends, we assist democratic and participatory decision-making in public policies to protect people and the environment.

Ah. Far Left Progressives. Who receive their funding from the Ecotrust, a group whose mission creep turned them from people concerned about the environment into a group concerned with “social justice.” Which also feeds off of tax payer money.

A group of eight leading climate economists has a message for United States senators now considering a bill to cap emissions: don’t think of long-term mitigation costs as a massive expenditure, but rather a form of reasonably-priced “planetary climate insurance.”

Only left wing climate alarmists would call for destroying the world wide economy in the name of “planetary climate insurance.” Do you ever get the feeling that they aren’t really think about the best interests of actual people? You can certainly expect energy prices to rise significantly, since those “alternative energy sources” are barely viable. Too bad more and more and more actual scientists are coming out to say that the whole AGW movement is the same that comes from the backside of a cow.