Ecotrust in the News
The Washington Post
May 6, 2009
by Kristen Sheeran and Mindy Lubber
The Cost of Climate Inaction
Robert J. Samuelson's April 27 op-ed, "Selling the Green Economy," was way off the mark on the economics of tackling climate change. It was a call to bury our collective heads in the sand simply because the future involves uncertainty — exactly the opposite of what we need to do.
Samuelson argued that the cost of moving to a clean-energy economy is higher than advocates expect and that transition can't happen nearly fast enough to meet the ambitious goals proposed in the climate and energy bill sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.).
But this assumes that all costs involved in mitigating climate change — and there will be costs — represent new costs, without acknowledging the massive error in our market system that equates the price of carbon emissions to zero. This fundamental error skews everything that follows, because if emitting carbon costs nothing on a balance sheet, all steps to reduce pollution count as "new costs."
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