Sarah Palin: Copenhagen, Cap-and-Trade Will Kill the Economy

Daily analysis of the business of the environment by The Wall Street Journal.

* December 9, 2009, 11:26 AM ET

By Keith Johnson

In case you missed it, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin called for President Obama to “boycott Copenhagen” in an op-ed in the Washington Post today. The piece has, predictably, got the blogosphere abuzz—both for what she says and the fact that she got to say it all.

Associated Press
Wordsmith

First, Gov. Palin’s piece takes aim at the Copenhagen climate talks by linking them to the “Climategate” email scandal, which she says undermines the science behind the meeting in the first place. Then she goes back to familiar ground, arguing that the Obama administration’s plan to curb greenhouse-gas emissions will poleax the U.S. economy.

The reactions have been fast and furious. The Huffington Post wonders why Gov. Palin got more space from the WaPo; she did another op-ed critical of the administration’s plans recently. That wraps into wider criticism of the Washington Post, where George Will regularly infuriates environmentalists with his dismissals of global warming. More on that fallout over at the Atlantic Wire.

Gov. Palin’s piece comes in the middle of pushback against the whole idea that the world even needs to reach agreement to curb emissions at Copenhagen—and that the U.S. needs to play a leading role.

National Review, for instance, sets out to slay the dragon, as it were: “More maddening, this tax-and-spend treaty is a costly solution to an imaginary problem. So-called ‘global warming’ threatens Earth about as urgently as does the Loch Ness Monster.”

What about Gov. Palin’s arguments? Basically, she says that while climate change exists—she’s seen it in Alaska—the potential harm pales in comparison to what could be wrought by new U.S. energy policies: “We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs. And those costs are real.”

That’s actually a very contentious point: Just what are the benefits of limiting the damage from climate change?

Academics know there is a price to be paid for curbing carbon emissions and making energy more expensive—that’s practically the whole idea. The trick is figuring out exactly how that compares to the price to be paid from future environmental damages.

Plenty of folks, most notably Lord Nicholas Stern, argue that the “costs of inaction” far outweigh the costs of tackling climate change. Other studies agree—arguing that U.S. climate legislation offers $2 in benefits for every $1 of costs.

And that’s just benefits from avoiding the worst of climate change. A cleaner energy sector could also help avoid the estimated $120 billion a year that dirty energy costs the country in health and other environmental problems.

In short, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of Copenhagen’s ability to address the climate problem—such as the inability to verify exactly what the developing world says it will do to curb emissions.

But those reasons don’t seem to include the economics of cleaner energy.