From Dr. Grist, an infographic that should put the permanent kibosh on an idiotic talking point about emissions standards:
Another talking point that needs to die: the so-called “rebound effect,” in which energy use rises to offset conservation. Noting a recent industry report on the subject, David Goldstein says:
The most obvious rebuttal to “rebound effect” claims is the performance of the U.S. economy since the early 1970′s: Between 1973 and 2009, U.S. economic production more than tripled even as total U.S. energy use increased by less than a third. If “rebound effect” advocates were right, that record would have been flatly impossible, since savings in energy use would be offset by activities that demand energy, keeping energy use trends in lockstep with economic growth (just as they were for the first three decades after World War II).
That was indeed the confident prediction of some economists when we began our careers in the mid-1970s, and such forecasts lie today on the ash heap of history — along with hundreds of unmourned power plants that never had to be built and mines that never had to be dug. (Emphasis mine)
Compare the expected costs and effects of a clean energy policy to the dirty one we’re using:
While the federal economists pegged a mid-range value of climate damages at $30 per ton of emissions using the 2002 version of PAGE, the revised version suggests the number is closer to $63, Johnson found.
That’s $2 shy of the $65 estimate the federal Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon identified last year as the “worst-case” impact of carbon emissions. (Emphasis mine)
The United States produced about 5.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide last year; I’ll let you do the math yourself. The numbers are in: green puts you in the black, and climate change is the red ink.
