So says Dr. Frank Ackerman, Economist, Tufts University & Stockholm Environment Institute in response to a promised Bush veto of climate legislation.
Agence France-Presse:
Bush warned that the bill "would impose roughly six trillion dollars of new costs on the American economy," and was the "wrong way to proceed."
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush would veto the bill "if it were to pass in its current form."
Not surprisingly, this is BS. The legislation includes "
cap and trade" provisions, which would open new markets.
As the Lieberman-Warner bill comes up for a vote, critics are telling us that we can't afford to do anything about climate change. They've got it backwards: we can't afford to do NOTHING.
I directed a recent study of the costs of inaction for the U.S. If we do nothing to control climate change, just four categories of costs - damages from more intense hurricanes, sea level rise, increased energy costs, and increased water supply costs - will reach almost $2 trillion per year by the end of this century. And that's just for four areas. A standard economic model of climate costs estimates total U.S. damages at twice that high, almost $4 trillion per year. (For the study, see http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/cost/contents.asp )
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