The man was chairman of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, and a professor at Columbia University. I don't know his politics down pat, but I seriously doubt he's a Republican.

This method of "expanding" the costs to cover anything remotely related is interesting--similar to how IraqBodyCount does their calculations--and I'd like to see it spread to some other areas.

For example, the estimated economic loss just in New York due to the 9/11 attacks has reached numbers as high as $100 billion. A nation-wide number would be instructive.

Here's a good one: take the following graph, and figure out the total amount of money America is losing in keeping ANWR human-free.

Production Schedules at Two Development Rates for the 5 Percent Probability of Recovering 16.0 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil from the ANWR Coastal Plain of Alaska

Source here. This was written with oil at about $25 a barrel.

With about 150,000 caribou involved up there, at $50 a barrel, that figures to approximately 5 million dollars per caribou, assuming that the animals are somehow lost because someone is drilling for oil in the same zip code it lives in.

The environmental movement, of course, is responsible for not one thin dime of this economic loss, just like they're not responsible for any economic losses they generate. On the other hand, corporations are held liable for any environmental damage they do. Quite a racket for the greenies, isn't it?

For a real good time, we can throw in the economic effects of what that amount of money will end up doing in the hands of those we DO buy that oil from. The Middle East. Venezuela.

Hey, this is kind of fun.