Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Ryan Avent, Conor Clarke and Matt Ronglie all have already covered this, but the CBO released their projections for how much the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill will cost. Contrary to Republican nightmares, Waxman-Markey will probably end up cost $175 per household, instead of $1,600. So, you know, esteemed economist Martin Feldstein turned out to be wrong by nearly a factor of ten.

And while this may be outside the purview of the Congressional Budget Office, it would be nice if they could score — somehow or another — the economic benefits of the world not melting down.  Call it dynamic scoring for liberals.

UPDATE For all you coming here from Yglesias, he’s very much right that just calculating the “costs” of climate change in terms of, say, expected US GDP lost is rather silly. The “somehow or another” was meant as wiggle room for all the concerns about probabilities of total disaster or the “cost” of Bangladesh no longer existing. I was just saying that if conservatives can agitate for the CBO to score tax cuts with consideration for economic growth, then we should agitate for the scores of global warming related legislation mentioning that global warming is bad and has “costs” — economic and otherwise.