More on Krugman

From Matthew Yglesias, who's handling the reins over at Talking Points Memo this week while Josh Marshall is on holiday, a look at the economic points from Paul Krugman's A Test of Our Character column (which I didn't add to the excerpts in the post below):

... I've been trying to say is that while global warming is a big deal, taking action on carbon emissions would actually be significantly less costly than most people seem to think. But don't take it from me -- listen to Paul Krugman: "There's some dispute among economists over how forcefully we should act to curb greenhouse gases, but there's broad consensus that even a very strong program to reduce emissions would have only modest effects on economic growth. At worst, G.D.P. growth might be, say, one-tenth or two-tenths of a percentage point lower over the next 20 years."

That's not nothing. One tenth of a percentage point of growth over 20 years adds up to a lot of money. But it's not a crushing burden, either. People 20 years from now would still be significantly wealthier than people today. And it's not as if our current policies are perfectly growth-maximizing anyway, so doing better on other fronts (health care, say) could easily pick up the slack caused by the negative growth effects of tackling global warming. What's more, the economic consequences of warming itself could be extremely dire and even under optmistic scenarios would cause at least some costly problems so it's not as if there's some free ride alternative option.