By Andrew Freedman
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
What they’re saying: “The calculation is a vast underestimate of the true benefits of reducing carbon pollution,” Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School who was not involved in the OMB report, told Axios via email.
- This is both because of the unquantified avoided climate risks and how clean technologies may be deployed, he said.
- “It does a straight up accounting of the currently known effects. It doesn’t — can’t — project how this Act has the potential to revolutionize the clean-energy race more broadly,” Wagner said.
- “There are plenty of positive tipping points along the way. First nobody has heat pumps, induction stoves or electric cars, before they become the obvious default. Emissions reductions will be all the larger as a result,” he said.
Quoted in: “White House: Climate law could slash related damages by up to $1.9 trillion” by Andrew Freedman, Axios (23 August 2022).