On March 10, Yale’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies posted a website looking at the economic impacts of reducing US carbon emissions. While opponents to mandatory climate legislation claim that the costs of adopting the leading proposals would be ruinous to the US economy, Yale says the world’s leading economists who have studied the issue disagree. The website synthesizes the results of thousands of policy simulations from 25 economic models being used to predict the economic impacts of reducing US carbon emissions. The website identifies the seven key assumptions accounting for most of the differences in the models’ predictions. It shows that even under the most pessimistic assumptions, US Gross Domestic Product would still grow by 2.4 percent per year even if emissions are reduced by 40 percent below projected business-as-usual trends by 2030. Under more favorable assumptions, the economy would even grow more rapidly if emissions are reduced than if they are allowed to continue to increase as in the past.
Click on the following links for more information:
http://environment.yale.edu/news/5624-reducing-carbon-emissions-could-help-not/
http://www.climate.yale.edu/seeforyourself/index.php
