Saving Planet Would Save Lots Of Money Too, Go Figure!

Looks like the socialist science fiends at Global Warming Hoax Headquarters have decided to fight dirty: Now they're saying that preventing catastrophic climate change would actually cost a lot less money than just letting things go all to hell. That's pretty underhanded, using science facts to appeal to people's self-interest! A new EPA report,   Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action, projects how the USA would benefit from international action to limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, versus the costs of allowing temperature increases to continue at current rates. It's pretty impressive, until you remind yourself that scientists paid by the oil industry reassure us global warming is all just a myth.

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So why would a little bit of warming over the next 85 years matter to the economy? Let's see what the socialist radicals at Fortune say:

By surveying six sectors — health, infrastructure, electricity, water resources, agriculture and forestry, and ecosystems — the EPA report found that global warming’s associated extreme temperatures and increased incidence of natural disasters could lead to a variety of unforeseen consequences. In the health sector, the EPA estimated that more than 69,000 lives could be at risk by 2100 due to worsening air quality and extreme temperatures. Plus, more than 1.2 billion labor hours could be lost in the same period due to extreme temperatures.

You know, that sounds like it might be a bad thing, maybe. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said Monday that we actually can do something to prevent all that big climate badness (as if!):

Based on rigorous peer-reviewed science, the report examines two possible futures. One is that we don’t really do anything to reduce carbon pollution, and the second is one where we take global action now.

The report, she said, is an "opportunity to understand how we can benefit and will benefit from global action, and how that compares to business as usual, if we don’t see that global action happen.”

Among other nasties, the report projects specific costs of doing nothing:

• $4.2-$7.4 billion in additional road maintenance costs each year.

• $3.1 billion annually in damages to coastal regions due to sea-level rise and storm surges.

• $6.6-$11 billion annually in agricultural damages.

• A loss of 230,000 to 360,000 acres of cold-water fish habitat.

• A loss of 34 percent of the US oyster supply and 29 percent of the clam supply.

• $110 billion annually in lost labor due to unsuitable working conditions.

Hahaha, EPA, you are really funny! Don't you know we already refuse to pay for roads and infrastructure, so additional costs will just be a big number that we'll ignore just as much? Next you'll probably say something crazy, like new greener technologies could create economic growth and create jobs, which we all know is impossible because Solyndra went under. Besides, the EPA acknowledges that it doesn't even address the possible costs of preventing additional warming, since there are "multiple policy approaches that could be undertaken to achieve any particular emissions reduction target," and they'd all have different costs.

The report's FAQ also has this chilling observation about whether there'd be any  good effects  of climate change:

In the report, positive effects are, in general, substantially outweighed by the negative effects of unmitigated climate change within their respective sectors. There are specific examples of this. The projected increase in deaths due to more frequent extremely hot days is estimated to be much larger than the projected decrease in deaths due to fewer extremely cold days.

But ... but James Inhofe threw a snowball in the Senate! Surely that must count for something?

The report also includes this nifty projection of changes in surface temperature over the next 85 years if we do nothing; in this image, "Reference" is the projected change if we do nothing, and "mitigation" is the nice cool continent we'll have if we reduce global carbon emissions (click to embiggen):

We're going to be bookmarking this thing for further reading, not that it will persuade members of the reality-challenged community, who saw a website that said global temperatures haven't increased since 1998 and won't believe anything else, no matter how often that claim is debunked. If nothing else, the report will be a nice way to pass the time while we prepare for global extinction. Or we could, you know, try to do something about it.

[ Fortune / The Hill / Mother Jones / EPA ]