Opinion: How many economists does it take to change a fluorescent lightbulb?

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Memo to the Union of Concerned Scientists: When you lead off a press release with the phrase ‘Top economists agree,’ you’ve just lost your audience.

In truth, top economists don’t agree about much of anything, which helps explain why the nation is currently in such an economic fix. Climate change is one subject on which disagreement, among economists if not climate scientists, is particularly rife. So when the UCS puts out an open letter from ‘more than 100 Ph.D. economists with expertise in California energy and climate issues,’ all of them opposing Proposition 23, it’s bound to raise a few eyebrows even among true global warming believers. I have no doubt at all that the backers of Prop. 23 could put together an equally distinguished panel of economists who favor the measure.

UCS actually roped in 118 academics, led by Stanford Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow, to warn that ‘delaying action now and waiting for the future before initiating accelerated action to reduce global warming gases will be more costly than initiating action now’ (apparently their doctorates weren’t in English). That’s nice, but the letter won’t have much influence over voters when they weigh in on Proposition 23 -- the November ballot initiative that would suspend California’s mandated curbs on greenhouse gases until the state’s job market improves. The crowd that’s skeptical about climate change already has a problem trusting academics. If you don’t believe the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academies of Science or the national academies of the entire developed world, you’re probably not going to put much stock in a panel of eggheads put together by the Union of Concerned Scientists. And if there’s any field of study that inspires less public confidence than climatology, it’s economics.

-- Dan Turner