How will reducing greenhouse gas emissions affect the American economy?

Yale has produced a calculator whereby you enter what you consider the likelihoods of various different variables (for example, if you think there's a 75% chance that climate change will result in economic damages to the United States if U.S. emissions are not reduced, you enter 0.75), and it calculates the US economic growth rate over the next 20 years based on that scenario.

It's pretty interesting.  The conclusion is "even under worst case assumptions the economy would continue to grow."  Under my assumptions it grew at a rate almost as fast as 'business as usual.'

Now let's just hope that calculator gets seen by the folks making (and vetoing) climate change policies!

Yeah it seems pretty common sense to me that reducing our emissions won't have a big net impact on our economy, because it's mostly just shifting over to greener technologies.  That will involve more investment, create more jobs, etc.  Besides which, gas won't last forever, and the sooner we switch to alternative fuels, the easier the transition will be and the longer our reserves will last.

 I feel that the spector of economic collapse brought on by the reduction in greenhouse gases in the short-term via congressional mandate is a complete red herring.  What is true is that many of our politicians have little to no understanding of the times they live in or the future ramifications of their actions for future American generations.  

The fact remains that there is more to be gained by converting this country to a "green economy" than to  continue on with the burning of dead things for the main fuel of our economic engine.  What I wouldn't give for a gov't structure that was actually manned by citizens from every facet of American life.  The collective reasoning of our citizens would be orders of magnitude greater than the homogenous make-up of the current gov't.  

Alas, our country is not organized in such a manner.  The best we can do as private citizens is to vote for those candidates who are best willing to support and fight for our interests.  Hopefully, now that all these environmental issues are coming to a head, the next round of congressional and presidential candidates will be more open to addressing the problem and seek ways in which to move this country into the "greener" future.