The Unasked Questions

Tom Fuller at Examiner.com ran a survey on various aspects of climate change and policy for the last few days (sorry, the survey is now closed, but Tom says he’ll be writing up the results soon).

At the end he asked for any questions that he might have missed. Usually by that point in a survey I’ve lost interest, but this one was pretty well designed, so I submitted the two key questions I thought that he’d missed:

Q: Considering the cap and trade policies as described in the draft Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer bills, what impact on real US green house gas emissions do you believe they will have by 2025?

a) we will meet the emissions targets in the bills

b) we will have a reduction in emissions, but not close to the targets

c) they will have no effect on the US GHG emissions

Q: Again, considering the cap and trade policies as described in the draft Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer bills, what impact on the US economy do you believe they will have by 2025?

a) the economy will be heavily, negatively impacted (> 1% of GDP)

b) little or no impact to the economy

c) cap and trade will cause growth in the economy (> 1% of GDP)

You could imagine these to actually be more of a sliding scale, and trying to figure out where on the chart you think we’ll end up.

The standard rhetoric from Washington is that the system will have little economic downside (“the cost of one postage stamp per household per day”), while obviously meeting its goals since its a legally binding cap. On top of that, they will tell you, there will be tons of new jobs created.

How would you answer these questions?