Delvin says study confirms climate change team recommendations are misleading, even dishonest

July 29, 2008

Olympia... Sen. Jerome Delvin, R-Richland, says a peer review of climate change recommendations from the governor’s Climate Advisory Team confirms what he has said all along: Their benefits are drastically overstated and their true costs are either understated or hidden entirely.

Delvin, a Climate Advisory Team member himself, responded to today’s release of a third-party cost-benefit analysis of the CAT’s climate change recommendations. The report found that the CAT recommendations give legislators no credible data.

The review, by Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in Boston, said of the CAT report, “Its cost savings estimates cannot be believed, and it fails to quantify the monetary benefits of reduced carbon emissions.” After analyzing the real costs and actual benefits, the Institute estimated a true net cost of the CAT recommendations to be more than $4.2 billion.

“From the very beginning, the CAT team had an agenda, and they pushed it through” Delvin said. “They allowed no debate, produced cost ‘savings’ that didn’t make sense, and claimed that these savings offset what I could clearly see were enormous, economy-killing costs to businesses and consumers. When I brought up these concerns, I was repeatedly written off or ignored. It’s great to see expert validation that my fears about the effect of these recommendations were right on target.”

The Institute’s cost-benefit analysis found the CAT report:

o    does not quantify benefits so they can be realistically compared to costs;

o    claims certain costs are actually benefits; and

o    overcounts some benefits and understates or ignores huge economic costs.

“I have serious concerns,” Delvin said. “If the present CAT recommendations are presented to the Legislature next year, the resulting legislation could be catastrophic for our state economy because it would be based on faulty information and conjecture. I’m hoping public pressure will force a true cost-benefit analysis so legislators will have hard numbers on which to make decisions that affect the life of every person in Washington.”

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Sen. Delvin represents the 8th Legislative District, which includes
Richland, Kennewick, Benton City, and Prosser.

Additional contact: Pat Albright at (360) 786-7519 or albright.pat@leg.wa.gov