If Congress approves cap-and-trade legislation establishing restrictions for carbon emissions, the laws could cost Pennsylvania 90,000 jobs and each household within the state could be out $1,500 annually by 2030, according to research done by the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF).

The same legislation would increase gasoline prices by at least 19 percent and residential electricity rates by 29 percent in the same time frame, said Dr. Margo Thorning, senior vice president and chief economist for ACCF.  She was one of a panel of experts who spoke on the economic impact of global warming at an event co-hosted by the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry and the Pennsylvania Environmental Council on Tuesday.

As bad as federal emission restrictions could be for Pennsylvanians, trying to impose restrictions at a state level could be even worse, said Dr. Thorning.  She criticized Pennsylvania's Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP), developed by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for having stricter targets than the federal cap-and-trade bill, for using inappropriate economic models to forecast impacts of the plan, and for ignoring the nearly insignificant impact it would have on global carbon emissions.

Dr. Margo Thorning spoke at the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry's Climate Change Summit on Tuesday.

"States need to take a global view of this and not look just at what can we do in our state to reduce emissions, because its costly, so you want to be cautious and careful and make changes slowly," she said.  Pennsylvania's carbon emissions represent less than one percent of the global "carbon footprint."

On its own, the warming of the planet is unlikely to have serious economic impacts on Pennsylvania, though certain small parts of the state's economy are likely to be hit hard, said Dr. James Shortle, a Penn State economist who also spoke at the event.

Dr. Shortle said state agriculture and forests will be most affected by global warming over the next decade, but productivity gains or losses would be most likely be offset by changing prices as markets adapt to changing economic realities.  Warmer winters could shut down ski resorts, for example, but longer summers would create other recreational opportunities to balance it out, he said.

"I would anticipate the non-market impacts of climate change to be quite large.  My greatest concerns are about the ecosystems impacted by climate change," said Dr. Shortle.

Non-market impacts are the value of things that are not measured in the economy, such as the value of fishing days or flood controls, said Dr. Shortle.  He said some of those non-market factors, such as an increase in water-borne diseases, require action on the part of governments.

From right, Gene Barr, vice president of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry; Dr. James Shortle, professor of environmental economics at Penn State; Donald Welsh, president of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council; Dr. Margo Thorning, senior vice president of the American Council for Capital Formation.

Of course, all those conclusions assume the world is in fact getting warmer and will continue to do so, a point of constant contention between scientists on both sides of the climate debate.  On Tuesday, however, the focus was on economic impacts more than scientific proof of climate change.

Even the global warming "skeptic" in the room, University of Alabama climate researcher Roy Spencer, did not attempt to dispute data showing increasing global temperature.  Instead, he challenged the conclusions being drawn from that data, suggesting that global climate changes are more likely the result of ocean currents, cloud patterns, and general environmental cycles than influenced by mankind's emission of greenhouse gasses.

When it came to evaluating cap-and-trade or carbon taxes, Dr. Spencer said they were solutions in search of a problem.

"No one has been killed in this world by man-made climate change, yet we know for sure that poverty kills, and if we increase the cost of fuels, you are going to kill people," said Dr. Spencer.

Dr. Shortle, the Penn State economist, disagreed.

 "I would say that for Pennsylvania, the costs of doing something about climate change are probably more than the benefits to Pennsylvanians," said Dr. Shortle.  "When we think about these issues, we can't let our decisions be based purely on estimates of the cost and benefits.  We have moral obligations to future generations in this nation, but also to the future generations of other nations."

Eric Boehm is a reporter for PA Independent.  He can be reached at Eric@PAIndependent.com