Old News in New Bottles: Economists Say Curbing Climate Change Will Help Our Economy

It was great to see economists in two separate New York Times opinion pieces recently noting that controlling climate pollution may be economically beneficial rather than restraining growth, as conventional wisdom among economists has held.

Eduardo Porter, a former editorial board member of the Times and current author of its Economic Scene column argued that “This time…advocates [for limiting climate pollution] come armed with a trump card:  all things considered, the cost of curbing carbon emissions may be considerably cheaper than earlier estimates had suggested.  For all the fears that climate change mitigation would put the brakes on growth, it might actually enhance it.”

This just a few days after Paul Krugman, reviewing the same overview reports but also citing some different supporting evidence than Porter, wrote that “strong measures to limit carbon emissions would have hardly any negative effect on economic growth, and might actually lead to faster growth.”

It is good news that two such distinguished economists are validating new reports that show climate protection is good from a narrow economic perspective –a perspective that doesn’t even count the financial benefits of avoiding climate-change-caused natural disasters. However, it’s distressing that it has taken this long to overcome the flawed conventional wisdom that held that taking steps to cut the emissions harming our health and the environment will lead to lost jobs and high bills.  (The reasons it is deeply flawed are addressed in Chapters 4 and 6 of Saving Energy Growing Jobs.)

Old News in New Bottles:  Economists Say Curbing Climate Change Will Help Our Economy