A right wing think tank accused climate change activists of pushing a “disastrous” agenda, one week after receiving a briefing from a non-partisan government agency that whitewashed the economic impacts of a rapidly warming planet.
The Hoover Institute, a Stanford University think tank, released a report this week that lent credence to science denialism and promoted a “balanced approach” to climate change. It decried “global-warming alarmists” who want “to precipitously abort our use of fossil fuels.”
“Doing so,” the report claims, “would be economically disastrous” and “environmentally inconsequential.”
On November 24th, more than a week before the organization’s joint energy task force published its findings, it was briefed by the Congressional Budget Office about the potential “negative economic effects” of a carbon tax–consequences that included “increased prices,” “reduced supply of labor,” and, “lower output.” The 18-slide presentation, however, neither mentioned the negative externalities of carbon emissions, such as higher rates of asthma, nor the economic consequences of climate change. It did claim that a “tax on carbon” would “compound the negative economic effects caused by existing taxes on individual and corporate income.”
That CBO power-point presentation was released Friday afternoon. It was compiled by a Senior Advisor in the office’s Microeconomics Studies Division. The Hoover Institute’s report was released on December 2nd.
“To the alarmists, we say that global-warming science should not be an opportunity to impose broader and potentially irrelevant political and social values through favored policy instruments,” the think tank stated this week.
While the Hoover report endorsed a carbon tax as a “way to create a more level playing field” with other types of energies, it also endorsed fracking and gave deference to global warming deniers. It said evidence points to a link between rising temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions, but went on to claim “uncertainty does remain” still about the science of global warming.
According to a 2010 review, the Hoover Institute received $40 million a year in funding, with the vast majority of it coming by way of endowments and private donors. The institute’s energy task force is comprised of roughly three-dozen policy wonks and past government officials, including former Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Before joining George W. Bush’s administration, Rice was a board member for the oil giant Chevron. It named an oil tanker after her, but “quietly” changed the name in 2001, after Rice was named a White House national security advisor.
The Sentinel reached out to the Hoover Institute for more information about the CBO briefing, they neglected to comment before publication of this article.
The CBO is a nonpartisan office that describes itself as providing “independent analyses of budgetary and economic issues to support the Congressional budget process.” It also routinely briefs private organizations on a number of issues.
In 2009, as Congress was debating climate change legislation, CBO director Doug Elmendorf testified to lawmakers, claiming that “most of the economy involves activities that are not likely to be directly affected by changes in climate.”
Other government agencies have significantly changed their calculations since then.
According to the White House’s own projections, a 2-degree Celsius increase in global temperatures would cost the global economy $150 billion in damages.
A Defense Department report released in October also stated that “rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict.”
The Pentagon also found that warming would “likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe.”
When asked for comment, the CBO referred to a 2009 report on climate change impacts, which notes “experts believe that there is a small possibility that even relatively modest warming could trigger abrupt and unforeseen effects during the 21st century that could be associated with quite large economic costs in the United States.”
When asked why this analysis was missing from the office’s November briefing to the Hoover Institute, CBO didn’t provide comment.
