A few quick climate hits today:

  • The US Congressional Budget Office estimates (pdf link) that the climate legislation recently passed by the US House of Representatives would have a negligible impact on the economy in the near term, reducing GDP “by roughly one-quarter percent to three-quarters of a percent in 2020.”  By comparison, CBO expects  the economy overall to grow by 30 percent over the period—which makes the effects of Waxman-Markey climate legislation little more than a rounding error.  And, besides, as the CBO analysts note, these figures don’t even consider the potential economic benefits of reducing the risks of climate change.
  • Meanwhile, the Congressional Research Service chimes in on the climate debate with this piece of wisdom: “Long-term cost projections are at best speculative, and should be viewed with attentive skepticism.”  True ‘dat.  Anybody who claims to “know” that Waxman-Markey—or anything else, for that matter—will kill the economy is full of it.  (Though I suppose the uncertainty applies to the CBO projections as well…)
  • Finally, The Onion, America’s finest remaining newspaper, writes about new, previously-unnoticed risks created by melting arctic ice.