• The cost of environmental and risk regulations on the economy has risen from $80 billion per year in 1977 to an estimated $250 billion in 1998. Source: T.D. Hopkins, "Regulatory Costs in Profile," Center for the Study of American Business. Contact: 314/935-5662, Web: http://csab.wustl.edu.
  
  
• Expenditures by the Environmental Protection Agency, one of many federal agencies involved in environmental policy, have risen from $1.289 billion in fiscal year 1971 to $7.4 billion in fiscal year 1998. Meanwhile, the EPA's staff has grown from 5,500 to over 14,000 (excluding part-time employees). Expenditures by the National Park Service will top $1.6 billion in 1998 while expenditures by the Fish and Wildlife Service will be close to $750 million. Sources: The EPA and Steve Moore of the Cato Institute. Contact: 202/842-0200, Web: http://www.cato.org.
  
  
• Since 1971, the Federal Register, a government document that publishes all new federal regulations, has grown from 2,036 pages to over 69,000 pages. Source: Heritage Foundation's regulation web site, www.regulation.org.
  
  
• U.S. compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement approved in December 1997 mandating that the U.S. reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 7%below 1990 levels by 2012, could cost the U.S. economy $300 billion per year and result in job losses in the two to three million range, according to preliminary estimates. To meet the 7% target, the U.S. would have to reduce both CO2 emissions and fuel consumption to 30% below what they would normally be. This is because increased population coupled with economic growth would push energy consumption up by 18% automatically. To put these numbers in perspective, the Great Depression only resulted in a 10% reduction in energy consumption. Even a more modest objective of reducing CO2 emissions to 1990 levels could prove costly. A study conducted by the prestigious Wharton Economic Forecasting Associates (WEFA) last year concluded that just stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels would result in a cumulative loss in Gross Domestic Product of $3.3 trillion over 20 years and a cumulative loss of 22.8 million person-years of employment. It would also result in increases in consumer prices of between 40% and 90%, with natural gas and electricity rates rising by 132% and 101% respectively. Further, the Brookings Institution's Warwick McKibbin and Peter Wilcoxen argue that such stabilization would cause "dramatic changes in exchange rates, trade balances, and international capital flows." Assuming U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would increase by 20% over 1990 levels by 2010, reducing them to 1990 levels would result in an increase in the U.S. trade deficit of between $27 and $54 billion each year. Sources: "The New 'Clinton-Lite' Global Warming Strategy: Half the Controversy, Same Bad Aftertaste," National Center for Public Policy Research, Contact: David Ridenour @ 202/5543-4110, E-mail: dridenour@nationalcenter.org,Web: www.nationalcenter.org; "Kyoto's Seven Percent Solution," National Center for Policy Analysis, Contact: H. Sterling Burnett @ 972/386-6272, Web: www.ncpa.org; and Energy Advocate, January 1998
  
  

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