Montana Climate Change Action Plan is Bad Policy…
April 24th, 2008 | by Craig |…based on bad science. But we’ve covered that already. Here is a peer-reviewed study from the Montana Policy Institute that comes to the same conclusion. You can read the entire report here. (And gird yourselves for some wailing and gnashing!)
Bozeman, MT. April 23rd, 2008: The Montana Policy Institute, a new nonpartisan policy research organization in Montana, has just released a study by the Beacon Hill Institute challenging the economic assumptions and methodology employed by Montana’s Climate Change Advisory Group’s recently released Montana Climate Change Action Plan (MCCAP). The study does not address the science of climate change or attempt to assign motives to the Advisory Group’s recommendations. It simply examines the economics of the MCCAP plan and the methodology employed to assess the plan’s costs and benefits.
The study concludes that:
- MCCAP costs and benefits are not quantified in a way that allows them to be compared. Estimated costs to reduce greenhouse gases of between $93 million to $691 million are set against metric tons of greenhouse gases reduced, without any attempt to weigh the benefits of reducing those gases against the costs of reducing them;
- When estimating economic impacts, costs are sometimes misinterpreted as benefits;
- Cost estimates leave out important factors, including program expenses, alternative scenarios, demand-based consumer responses, and other factors, resulting in unrealistically low best-case figures.
These shortcomings disqualify the MCCAP as a scientifically sound basis for public policy. The Montana Policy Institute believes that a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis using realistic assumptions and sound economic principles should be conducted before Montana policymakers decide to create new mandates, new bureaucracies, and new open-ended spending commitments. The stakes are too high on both sides of the climate change issue to accept anything less than a full and honest debate.
2 Responses to “Montana Climate Change Action Plan is Bad Policy…”
By James on Apr 24, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the post.
In Problem 3 of this report, where they examine programs with the greatest net cost savings, it is interesting to note that only one of the four programs actually made it to the 15 open for further discussion..
RCII-10 Industrial Energy Audits and Recommended Measure Implementation
I believe many may argue that there doesn’t need to be any cost-benefit analysis since ‘we must act now’(!).
By Carl Graham on Apr 25, 2008 | Reply
You’ve captured the point of MPI’s study, which is to counter the argument that no cost/benefit analysis is needed because the science is settled and we must act now. Even the three questions (Conservation, considerations, What is currently being done in this area, What potential new legislation in this area could be considered) posed by the EQC on the 15 recommendations they chose to examine ignore costs and benefits, and instead infer a desire to just do something…do anything and damn the cost in dollars or personal liberty. We at MPI would like to see a discussion that includes all sides and considers all factors. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.