Nevada Forecast: Potential Impacts of the Global Warming Treaty

12/01/1997 | Nevada Journal | December, 1997 issue

Nevada Forecast

Potential Impacts of the Global Warming Treaty

by Erica Olsen

ax and regulatory structures were considered as mechanisms to control the emission of greenhouse gases at the 1995 Conference of the Parties in Berlin, Germany. The intention of this month’s meeting in Kyoto, Japan is to yield specific targets and timetables on tax and regulatory proposals. But congressional and public disapproval mostly likely will delay setting legally binding regulations.

The dissapproval is stemming from economic studies estimating the impact of a carbon tax which is one of the most widely accepted proposals. The tax would be levied on nearly all types of energy use. The most common hypothetical example used in these estimates is a $200 per ton carbon tax, which would be slightly less than the level of taxation needed to comply with the least burdensome of the proposals, according to studies conducted by DRI/McGraw Hill and the WEFA Group, the prestigious international economic forecasting firm. According to both studies, the $200 per ton tax would result in an increase in the price of gas by about a 50-60 cents per gallon and would produce similar price increases on all types of energy use, affecting every American by raising the price of virtually all goods and services.

The charts provided on this page show the estimated impact a carbon tax would have on Nevadans. u

In Short

In Nevada total Gross National State Product would fall $1.9 billion below the currently projected baseline.
Total U.S. GNP would decline $228 billion below the baseline.
Nevada would lose 22,700 jobs.
The U.S. would lose between 1.1 and 1.8 million jobs.
Household bills energy bills would rise between $900 and $1,100 annually.
Estimated real income would decline from the baseline by $409 in 2010.

Estimated 22,700 Nevada Jobs To Be Lost