From the press release "Claims about climate change policy benefits are unreliable:"
“ASU economics professor John Whitehead has distanced himself and his department from the report,” Cordato added. “Whitehead wrote on his Web site that he’s ‘very skeptical’ any positive benefits from climate change policies would cancel out the clear negative impacts.”
Check out the press release for an idea about how the positive jobs vs negative jobs numbers play out. My view is that jobs created or lost by an environmental policy is not the issue. Jobs aren't included in a benefit-cost analysis. The benefits of climate change policy are the damages avoided. The costs of climate change policy are things that we give up as a result. Jobs are a macroeconomic issue and the net effect of environmental and other microeconomic policies is virtually nil.
Let me analyze the quote above:
“ASU economics professor John Whitehead has distanced himself and his department from the report,”
Back before I first heard about the ASU study I received a phone call from a guy at the John Locke Foundation, here is about how it went:
John Locke: Wazzup!
Me: Nuttin', wazzup wichoo!
John Locke: Did you work on a climate change economic impact study for North Carolina?
Me: Nope. But I did work on this one: http://econ.appstate.edu/climate
John Locke: Did anyone in your department work on a climate change economic impact study for North Carolina?
Me: Not that I know of.
John Locke: Would you know about it if they had.
Me: Probably, I make it my business to know everything!
Here is the second and most disturbing part of the entry:
“Whitehead wrote on his Web site that he’s ‘very skeptical’ any positive benefits from climate change policies would cancel out the clear negative impacts.”
That's not what I wrote back then and it is not what I've written more recently. The positive benefits of climate change policy intended for a benefit-cost analysis are measured in ways outside of an economic impact analysis (e.g., http://econ.appstate.edu/climate).
Bottom line: I am not very skeptical that the benefits of climate change policy outweigh the costs. The details matter, of course, but there is sufficient economic evidence that the U.S. should proceed with some sort of incentive-based climate change policy.
