With every new environmental regulation, there are cries of economic disaster. But those disasters never actually happen.
Even if prices were to increase, so what? The GOP's and/or their constituents' expectations that prices on anything will never go up is ridiculous. The expectation that jobs will never be destroyed is ridiculous. This is how economies work and what progress looks like. In a best case scenario, we simply kick the can further down the road; it is inevitable that the prices of natural resources will only continue to go up as their scarcity and the cost of pilfering them goes up. In a worst case scenario, prices go up as the GOP claims and we now have a huge economic incentive to develop renewable energy resources which will hopefully lead us to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly suite of energy sources. That's not to say that there wouldn't be growing pains - there absolutely would be. There were growing pains during the industrial revolution, though, and surely no one thinks using steam engines instead of manual labor was a bad idea. I see this argument simply as an attempt to rationalize global warming "not being real" or other nonsense like that. As usual, the GOP begins with a conclusion and argues from there. Anyone with half a brain can recognize that most of their bullshit is just that. Unfortunately their constituents don't seem to be able to figure it out. I say all this, by the way, as a relatively conservative guy at heart. But we need to address the very real fact that burning all this shit is almost certainly destroying the environment and the ecosystem; the degree to which that is happening is really the only point of contention among non-idealogues. I really don't understand how that can be refuted. Is this going to solve everything? Of course not. But, as Bill Nye is quoted, "it's a good first step - let's get started." I agree.
Supporters of the GOP just seem greedy and shortsighted to me. "No! Prices can't go up for ME! I don't care if it benefits me hugely in the long run, I don't care if it benefits millions of people, I refuse to pay ANY extra money in the immediate future for any reason! I refuse to burden myself!" Addicted to money. Just like a heroin addict is very reluctant to realize the short-term withdrawals are worth the long-term benefits and is equally reluctant to realize that their life currently sucks and, given no change in behavior, will never improve. The GOP claims that their goal is to stabilize the economy, stimulate growth, and benefit the American people but they don't seem to realize their current behavior is causing us to hopelessly continue doing the opposite. They don't seem to realize the only way to make tough times better is to focus on the problem, work through the pain, and realize pain in the short term is more than worth happiness in the long term. That's what happens when you dig yourself a hole in the mud. You can try to build yourself a castle at the bottom of the hole, but the castle is going to be covered in mud and you're still going to be stuck at the bottom of a deep, dark hole. You aren't going to enjoy the castle. If you want to enjoy the castle you're going to have to first dig yourself out of the hole. Sure, the castle is going to take longer to build, and sure, it's going to require a lot more hard work, but at least at the end of the day you built something you can actually enjoy. And when you're sitting in your brand new castle in the sun, you're not going to be thinking about the time spent digging, you're going to be thinking about the next castle.
The huffpo article two links deep has some good statistical evidence that environmental regulations negatively impact neither the economy nor the individual corporations they affect.