This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study--prepared at the request of the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Science--presents an overview of issues related to climate change, focusing primarily on its economic aspects. The study draws from numerous published sources to summarize the current state of climate science and provide a conceptual framework for addressing climate change as an economic problem. It also examines public policy options and discusses the potential complications and benefits of international coordination. In keeping with CBO's mandate to provide impartial analysis, the study makes no recommendations.

As part of its mandate to provide the Congress with the objective, timely, and nonpartisan analysis needed to make informed economic and budgetary decisions, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prepares cost estimates for legislation under consideration by the Congress. In recent years, a number of legislative proposals have involved efforts to restrict emissions of greenhouse gases in the U.S. To estimate the budgetary impact of such proposals, CBO must first estimate the incremental costs to firms and households of mitigating greenhouse gases. This report briefly describes the methodology that CBO uses to estimate those incremental costs, the data sources and models used to develop that methodology, and the rationale for using it.

Human activities around the world are producing increasingly large quantities of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2) resulting from the consumption of fossil fuels and deforestation. A comprehensive response to that problem would include a collection of strategies: research to better understand the scientific processes at work and to develop technologies to address them; measures to help the economy and society adapt to the projected warming and other expected changes; and efforts to reduce emissions. This report discusses the economic costs of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in the U.S., describing the main determinants of costs, how analysts estimate those costs, and the magnitude of estimated costs. Illustrations.

Several Members of Congress and public interest groups have recently proposed policies that would reduce gasoline consumption in the United States. Such proposals stem primarily from a desire to enhance the nation's energy security and to decrease its emissions of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas that affects the Earth's climate. This book compares three methods of reducing gasoline consumption: increasing the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards that govern passenger vehicles, raising the federal tax on gasoline, and setting a limit on carbon emissions from gasoline combustion and requiring gasoline producers to hold allowances for those emissions (a policy known as a cap-and-trade program). Also, the book weighs the relative merits of those policies against several major criteria: whether they would minimise costs to producers and consumers; how reliably they would achieve a given reduction in gasoline use; their implications for automobile safety; and their effects on such factors as traffic congestion, requirements for highway construction, and emissions of air pollutants other than carbon dioxide. In addition, the book examines two more policy implications that lawmakers may be concerned about: the impact on people at different income levels and in different regions, and the effects on federal revenue.

Based on a comprehensive study review by leading urban planning researchers, this investigative document demonstrates how urban development is both a key contributor to climate change and an essential factor in combating it -- by reducing vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.

The social cost of carbon (SC-CO2) is an economic metric intended to provide a comprehensive estimate of the net damages - that is, the monetized value of the net impacts, both negative and positive - from the global climate change that results from a small (1-metric ton) increase in carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions. Under Executive Orders regarding regulatory impact analysis and as required by a court ruling, the U.S. government has since 2008 used estimates of the SC-CO2 in federal rulemakings to value the costs and benefits associated with changes in CO2 emissions. In 2010, the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (IWG) developed a methodology for estimating the SC-CO2 across a range of assumptions about future socioeconomic and physical earth systems. Valuing Climate Changes examines potential approaches, along with their relative merits and challenges, for a comprehensive update to the current methodology. This publication also recommends near- and longer-term research priorities to ensure that the SC- CO2 estimates reflect the best available science.

Summarizes the science of climate change and impacts on the United States, for the public and policymakers.