Congressional Budget Office
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Make the kids pay: The economic effects of climate change on future generations
If someone offered you $100 today or an inflation-adjusted $100 in 10 years, it’s unlikely you’d choose the latter. But if taking the money now cost your child’s generation billions of dollars, that option would seem pretty miserly. The debate over the economics of climate change boils down to that very calculation: how much are […]
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Is the Congressional Budget Office trying to kill humanity?
Cross-posted from Wonk Room. Yesterday, Doug Elmendorf, the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), testified before the Senate energy committee about the “comparatively modest” cost of a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon pollution. The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal blared “Congressional Budget Chief Says Climate Bill Would Cost Jobs” and “Cap-and-Trade Would Slow […]
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How CBO budget scoring devalues efficiency … WITH PUPPIES!
The Congressional Budget Office is back in the news, after director Doug Elmendorf testified before Congress about the economic impacts of clean energy legislation. Opponents of that legislation rushed to hype a few of his comments out of context, and succeeded, as usual, in getting their voices amplified in the Washington Post. Elmendorf didn’t say […]
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Treasury memo hysteria shows media incapable of screening out junk
Is any piece of nonsense from right-wing opponents of clean energy policy too silly, too outrageous, to get its day in the national press spotlight? It would seem not. Last week, CBS conservo-blogger Declan McCullagh breathlessly reported: “Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year.” That figure spread like wildfire through right-wing […]
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CBS’s Declan McCullagh promotes another false CEI attack on clean energy reform
Cross-posted from Wonk Room. According to Declan McCullagh, a libertarian blogger who works for CBS Interactive, secret Obama administration documents reveal that the cost of clean energy cap-and-trade legislation would be $1,761 per household — despite official estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Energy Information Administration of about a […]
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Conservatives ditch CBO data when convenient to attack climate bill
Conservatives who loved citing the Congressional Budget Office when it was being hard on health care legislation keep on ignoring it when it comes to climate legislation. Today conservatives tried once again to mislead the media into reporting the costs of cap-and-trade are higher than every objective analyst expects. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, with the […]
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Nobelist Krugman takes on the “fantasists” of the “burn-baby-burn crowd”
Nobel prize-winning NYT columnist Paul Krugman has been doing some terrific writing on the economics of climate action (see Climate action “now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump” by giving “businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities” and “Krugman strongly endorses Waxman-Markey“). Now he writes on Friday’s important […]
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Blogospheric passions run high on, um, the CBO report
After watching a tedious press conference this morning at which not a single question was asked about the Waxman-Markey bill (after Obama endorsed it!), I’m happy to see that somebody outside the dreary confines of “green blogging” is grappling with it. If it all happens to be obsessively focused on the CBO report, well, I’ll […]
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Waxman-Markey: We’d better try to get what we need
Once again Mick Jagger is right: “You can’t always get what you want/But if you try sometimes you just might find/You get what you need.” The House of Representatives is poised for its first-ever floor debate and series of votes on a landmark measure to reduce global warming pollution. This bill is revolutionary in its […]
