http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/04/climate-change-report-debunk/New Climate Change Report Debunks Key Right-Wing Talking Point On Global Warming
inhofeToday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the third part of its Assessment Report. The first two parts of the report released earlier this year dealt with the science and impacts of climate change. This new part suggests mitigating global warming’s effects can be done at a “modest cost.”
The right-wing has repeatedly advocated against taking bold action to curtail carbon emissions by propagating fears that it would bring down our economy:
Fox News: “Al Gore’s Global Warming Movie: Could It Destroy Our Economy?”
Rush Limbaugh: “
would have us destroy our economy and millions of jobs based on pseudoscience.”
James Inhofe: “Global warming is an alarmism. It’s a type of a hoax. The reality is that a cap on carbon is a cap on the economy.”
The report sets a target of reducing global warming gas emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050. By employing the use of energy efficient methods and by increasing use in the renewable energy area, the IPCC report says there is enormous potential for the cost-effective deployment of energy systems that would help reduce pollution while producing employment gains. According to Bill Hare, one of the lead authors of the report, the cost is manageable:
HARE: Well, over the period to 2030 it’s going to cost about, maximum, I would say about 0.1 percent loss of annual GDP growth globally. I’m not sure that would really be detected in terms of the year-to-year variations in global growth.
“It has been shown for the first time that stopping climate pollution in a very ambitious way does not cost a fortune,” said Stephan Singer of the World Wildlife Fund. “There is no excuse for any government to argue that it is going to cause their economy to collapse.”
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