EnviroLink Forum

Despite the lengthy debate on the federal budget in Congress, climate change rarely gets mentioned as a deficit driver. Yet paying for climate disruption was one of the largest non-defense discretionary budget items in 2012. Indeed, when all federal spending on last year's droughts, storms, floods, and forest fires are added up, the U.S. Climate Disruption Budget was nearly $100 billion.

You're a conservative? You want to control the cost of government? One way not to do that is ignore the public costs generated by AGW.

http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/taxpa ... -costs.asp



Of course this also drives up private costs and I notice matters like health costs and loss of work aren't even mentioned.

Last year, Obama dismissed the claim that the pipeline could reduce unemployment in the U.S., calling the potential impact of Keystone XL a "blip" in terms of job creation.

“Republicans have said that this would be a big jobs generator,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with the New York Times. “There is no evidence that that’s true. The most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline, which might take a year or two, and then after that we’re talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 jobs in an economy of 150 million working people.”

A 2011 study conducted by Cornell University’s ILR Global Labor Institute, which works with trade unions on environmental and other challenges, concluded that the Keystone XL pipeline could actually destroy more jobs than it created. The study takes into account job loss that would be caused if Midwesterners end up paying 10 to 20 cents more per gallon of gas due to the pipeline diverting oil from Midwest refineries to the Gulf region.

"Furthermore, pipeline spills, pollution and increased greenhouse gas emissions incur significant human health and economic costs, thus eliminating jobs," Sean Sweeney, director of the Cornell ILR Global Labor Institute, said in a statement.