Congressional Budget Office
Douglas W. Elmendorf
Director’s Blog

Tonight I’m giving the Goldman Lecture in Economics at Wellesley College. (Here are the slides from my talk.)  The topic is climate change—starting with an overview of the problem and then discussing a range of possible approaches to reducing the risks involved.  As I’ve noted before with regard to health care, our political system doesn’t deal well with gradual, long-term problems. And climate change would definitely qualify as one of those gradual, long-term problems.  (More precisely, let’s hope climate change is a gradual long-term problem and doesn’t become a sudden crisis, as is possible given the potential nonlinearities involved.) 

Reducing the risks associated with climate change requires trading off up-front costs in exchange for long-term benefits.  Given the difficult political economy in such trade-offs, the Goldman lecture discusses ways of reducing the shorter-term economic cost of meeting whatever longer-term environmental objective we choose. 

CBO released a brief today on climate-change policy and CO2 emissions from passenger vehicles (for the PDF, click here).

Discussions about addressing climate change (e.g., through a cap-and-trade program or a carbon tax) often focus on the transportation sector. The brief argues, however, that most of the reduction in CO2 emissions would occur in other sectors (e.g., the electricity sector) and that the effects on vehicle emissions would be modest, especially in the shorter run.

To be sure, a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax would raise the price of gasoline, encouraging consumers to drive less and to buy more fuel-efficient cars– but the magnitude of these effects would be relatively small. For example, CBO has estimated that a price of $28 per metric ton of CO2 in 2012 would lead to a reduction of about 10 percent in total U.S. emissions compared with a no-action scenario. Vehicle emissions, though, would remain relatively constant in the short run, and even over time they would decline only by around 2.5 percent — much less than the 10 percent reduction in overall emissions.

Several factors account for the relatively small influence that a price on CO2 emissions would have on passenger vehicles and driving behavior. First, a CO2 price of $28 per metric ton would raise gas prices by about 25 cents per gallon, far less of an increase than consumers have recently born with little behavioral result. (Between 2003 and 2007, gas prices increased from $1.50 to more than $3.00 per gallon. Vehicle miles driven, driving speeds, and the purchase of larger vehicles have all responded only modestly despite the dramatic increase in prices.) An increase in gas prices of 25 cents or so per gallon is unlikely to generate massive changes in driving behavior.

In addition, recent changes to corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards will require substantial gains in fuel economy over the next dozen years. Especially over the longer term, gas price increases are not likely to have a large effect beyond what CAFE standards will require.

Finally, cultural, historic, and geographic considerations drive the extent to which Americans have become dependent on automobile travel, and their choices tend towards larger and more powerful (and less fuel efficient) automobiles. While dramatic increases in gasoline prices (or shifts in cultural norms) might eventually influence these considerations, the magnitude of gas price increases under most legislation under consideration would likely have little effect.

The brief was written by David Austin of our Microeconomic Studies Division.

This morning I’m testifying on climate change before the Committee on Ways and Means in the House of Representatives.

Global climate change is one of the nation’s most significant long-term policy challenges. Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions would be beneficial in limiting the risks associated with climate change, especially the risk of potentially catastrophic damage. Reducing those emissions, however, would also impose costs on the economy.  Our political system arguably has difficulty addressing this type of issue, in which there are short-term costs required in order to reap expected long-term benefits.

As I’ve discussed in other recent testimonies (see here and here), policymakers designing a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions face important decisions about how to allocate allowances: whether to sell or give them away, and if they are sold, how to use the revenue generated. In addition, policymakers would face decisions about the degree of flexibility offered to firms — especially the flexibility to reduce emissions in those years in which it is least expensive to do so.  These decisions can have substantial effects on the costs of meeting any given climate target.

Today’s testimony also includes a discussion of additional complexities that arise for energy-intensive U.S. industries facing foreign competition (the steel and aluminum industries, for example). Under stringent cap-and-trade policies, these industries would face increased import competition (and export competition in third countries) from countries with less stringent policies on greenhouse gas emissions, which could not only reduce domestic production in those industries but also undermine part of the environmental benefit from an emissions reduction scheme. In my testimony, I examine a few recent proposals intended to mitigate these concerns.

CBO has been doing a significant amount of analytical work on climate change, and I wrote an oped for today’s Washington Post on the topic.

The piece notes that the economic cost of emission reductions will depend on the degree to which flexibility is provided on when emission reductions can occur and what policymakers do with the valuable emission allowances created under a cap-and-trade program.

The first point — that timing flexibility matters — is based on the observation that, as the oped points out, changes in climate reflect the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over long periods. The environmental impact depends little on year-to-year fluctuations in emissions. By contrast, the economic cost of reducing emissions can vary a lot from year to year — because of factors such as weather, economic activity or the state of technology. Flexibility regarding the timing of emissions reductions matters because of this disconnect between the environmental dynamic, which depends on total emissions reductions over an extended period, and the economic dynamic.

The second point has been discussed at length in numerous CBO documents. For more on CBO’s climate work, see here.

CBO issued a letter today reviewing options to offset price increases experienced by low- and moderate-income households under a cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide emissions.

• Under a cap-and-trade program for CO2 emissions, the government would set gradually tightening limits on emissions, issue rights (or allowances) corresponding to those limits, and then allow firms to trade the allowances among themselves. The net financial impact of such a program on low- and moderate-income households would depend in large part on how the value of emission allowances was allocated. By itself, a cap-and-trade program would lead to higher prices for energy and energy-intensive goods. Those price increases would impose a larger burden, relative to either income or household consumption, on low- and moderate-income households than on higher-income households.

• Lawmakers could choose to offset the price increases experienced by low- and moderate-income households by providing for the sale of some or all of the CO2 emission allowances and using the revenues to compensate such households.

• For example, if all allowances were sold and the proceeds used for an equal lump-sum rebate to each household, the rebate would be greater than the average increase in low-income households’ spending on energy-intensive goods. CBO’s letter discusses that and other options, including broad or targeted reductions in income tax rates, payroll or income tax rebates, an increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit, a supplement to Food Stamp benefits, increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and increased incentives for energy-saving investments by households. In addition, automatic cost-of-living increases for Social Security and Supplemental Security Income would provide partial protection for some households.

• Choosing among such options often involves a trade-off between providing targeted assistance to low- and moderate-income households and offsetting some of the adverse effects on overall economic activity from reducing carbon emissions.

Today CBO issued a cost estimate for an amended version of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008.  The substitute amendment for S. 3036 (formerly S. 2191) would set an annual limit or cap on the volume of certain greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted from electricity-generating facilities and from other activities involving industrial production and transportation.  Under this legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would establish three separate regulatory initiatives known as cap-and-trade programs— one covering most types of GHGs, one covering hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and a third program to cover the carbon emissions embodied in imported goods.

EPA would establish a quantity of allowances for each of calendar years 2012 through 2050 and would auction some of those allowances.  The proceeds would be used to finance various initiatives, such as developing renewable technologies, assisting in the education and training of workers, and providing energy assistance for low-income households.  EPA would distribute the remaining allowances at no charge, to states and other recipients, which could then sell, retire, or use them, or give them away.  Over the 40 years that the proposed cap-and-trade programs would be in effect, the number of allowances and emissions of the relevant gases would be reduced each year.

CBO estimates that enacting the legislation would increase revenues by about $902 billion over the 2009-2018 period, net of income and payroll tax offsets.  Over the next 10 years, we estimate that direct spending would total about $836 billion.  The additional revenues from enacting this legislation would exceed the new direct spending by an estimated $66 billion, thus decreasing future deficits (or increasing surpluses) by that amount over the next 10 years. Other spending could result from enactment of the bill, but it would be subject to future appropriation action. This estimate does not address such spending. In years after 2018, net revenues attributable to the legislation would exceed annual direct spending through 2050.

A detailed discussion of  the methodology that CBO uses for analyzing this type of legislation, including the budgetary treatment of the cap-and-trade program and a discussion of how tax offsets are applied to the revenues generated by allowances auctioned and given away are included in CBO’s April 10 cost estimate for S. 2191, the America’s Climate Security Act of 2007, as ordered reported by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in December 2007.

I am testifying this morning on climate change before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions would provide benefits to society by helping to limit the damage associated with climate change, especially the risk of significant damage. The webcast of the hearing is posted here. The testimony focuses on ways to reduce the economic cost of achieving any given greenhouse gas emissions target. In particular:

• Market-oriented approaches to reducing carbon emissions, such as a cap-and-trade program, would reduce emissions more cheaply than would command-and-control approaches, such as regulations requiring across-the-board reductions by all firms. Those market-oriented approaches are relatively efficient because they create incentives and flexibility for emission reductions to occur where and how they are least expensive to accomplish.

• The cost of meeting an emission target with a cap-and-trade program could be reduced, potentially quite substantially, by providing firms flexibility in the timing of their efforts to reduce emissions. In its most inflexible form, a cap-and-trade program would require that a specified cap on emissions was met each year. That lack of flexibility would increase the cost of achieving any long-term goal because it would prevent firms from responding to year-to-year differences in conditions that affected costs for reducing emissions — such as fluctuations in economic activity, energy markets, the weather, and the technologies available for reducing emissions. In contrast, because of the long-term nature of climate change, the key issue from an environmental perspective involves the long-term emissions and concentration paths of greenhouse gases, not the year-to-year fluctuations in emissions. The most cost-effective cap-and-trade design would thus encourage firms to make greater reductions when the cost of doing so was low and would allow them leeway to lessen their efforts when the cost was high. Providing firms with such flexibility could also prevent large fluctuations in the price of allowances that could be disruptive to the economy.

• One option for allowing firms flexibility in determining when to reduce emissions while also achieving compliance with a cumulative emissions target would be through setting both a ceiling—typically referred to as a safety valve—and a floor on the allowance prices each year. The price ceiling would allow firms to exceed the annual target when the cost of cutting emissions was high, while the price floor would induce firms to cut emissions more than the annual target in low-cost years. The price ceiling and floor could be adjusted periodically to ensure that emission reductions were on track for achieving the long-run target; such a dynamic price system could substantially reduce the cost of a cumulative emissions target.

• Policymakers’ choices about whether to distribute the allowances without charge or to auction them — and if auctioned, how to use the proceeds — could also have a significant effect on the overall economic cost of capping emissions. Evidence suggests that the cost to the economy of a 15 percent cut in U.S. emissions (not counting any benefits from mitigating climate change) might be half as large if policymakers sold the allowances and used the revenue to lower current taxes on capital that discourage economic activity, rather than giving the allowances away to energy suppliers and energy-intensive firms or using the auction proceeds to reduce the costs that the policy could impose on low-income households. Using the allowances’ value to lower the total economic cost could, however, exacerbate the regressivity of the policy change.

CBO issued a study today examining possible future private investment in new nuclear power plants. The extent of such investment depends not only on possible charges for carbon dioxide (if the Congress adopts climate change legislation) but also on existing incentives provided for such plants in the Energy Policy Act (EPAct) of 2005.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that demand for electricity in the United States will increase by 20 percent by the end of the next decade. Most of the additional demand would likely be met by conventional fossil-fuel technologies without the incentives in EPAct or the prospects of a market price on carbon emissions.

• Carbon dioxide charges of about $45 per metric ton would probably make nuclear generation competitive with conventional fossil fuel technologies as a source of new capacity and could lead utilities to build new nuclear plants that would eventually replace existing coal power plants. At charges below that threshold, conventional gas technology would probably be a more economic source of baseload capacity than coal technology. Below about $5 per metric ton, conventional coal technology would probably be the lowest cost source of new capacity.
• EPAct incentives would probably make nuclear generation a competitive technology for limited additions to base-load capacity, even in the absence of carbon dioxide charges. However, because some of those incentives are backed by a fixed amount of funding, they would be diluted as the number of nuclear projects increased; consequently, CBO anticipates that only a few of the currently proposed plants would be built if utilities did not expect carbon dioxide charges to be imposed.
• Uncertainties about future construction costs or natural gas prices could deter investment in nuclear power. In particular, if construction costs for new nuclear power plants proved to be as high as the average cost of nuclear plants built in the 1970s and 1980s (adjusted for inflation), or if natural gas prices fell back to the levels seen in the 1990s, then new nuclear capacity would not be competitive, regardless of the incentives provided by EPAct. Such variations in construction or fuel costs would be less likely to deter investment in new nuclear capacity if investors anticipate a carbon dioxide charge, but those charges would probably have to exceed $80 per metric ton in order for nuclear technology to remain competitive under a scenario with high construction costs and low natural gas prices.

The study was written by Justin Falk of our Microeconomic Studies Division.

I am testifying this morning before the Senate Finance Committee on the implications of a cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide emissions. The testimony is posted here. To view the hearing click here.

Global climate change is one of the nation’s most significant long-term policy challenges. Human activities are producing increasingly large quantities of greenhouse gases, particularly CO₂. The accumulation of those gases in the atmosphere is expected to have potentially serious and costly effects on regional climates throughout the world. The magnitude of such damage remains highly uncertain, but there is growing recognition of the risk that the damage may be extensive and perhaps even catastrophic.

The risk of potentially catastrophic damage associated with climate change can justify actions to reduce that possible harm in much the same way that the hazards we all face as individuals motivate us to buy insurance. Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions would help limit the degree of damage associated with climate change, especially the risk of significant damage. However, decreasing those emissions would also impose costs on the economy—in the case of CO₂, because much economic activity is based on fossil fuels, which release carbon in the form of carbon dioxide when they are burned. Most analyses suggest that a carefully designed program to begin lowering CO₂ emissions would produce greater benefits than costs.

One option for reducing emissions is to establish a “cap-and-trade” program. Under such a program, policymakers would set a limit on emissions and allow entities to buy and sell rights (referred to as allowances) to emit CO₂. In designing a cap-and-trade program to achieve emission reductions, policymakers would face a number of critical decisions, including whether to limit fluctuations in the price of allowances and whether to sell the allowances or give them away. If the government chose to sell them, decisions would also have to be made about whether to use the resulting revenue to offset other taxes, to assist workers or low-income households that might be adversely affected by the emission cap, to support other legislative priorities, or to reduce the deficit. My testimony makes the following key points about those issues:

• Market-oriented approaches to reducing carbon emissions (such as a cap-and-trade program or a carbon tax) are much more efficient than command-and-control approaches (such as regulations that require across-the-board reductions by all firms). The reason is that the market-oriented approaches create incentives and flexibility for emissions reductions to occur where and how they are least expensive to accomplish.
• Within the relatively efficient category of approaches that rely on the power of markets, a tax on emissions is generally more efficient than a cap-and-trade system. The reason is that although both a tax and a cap-and-trade system encourage firms to find the lowest-cost reductions at a particular point in time, a tax provides greater flexibility over time, allowing firms to achieve reductions when they are least expensive. In particular, a tax encourages firms to make greater reductions in emissions at times when the cost of doing so is low and allows them leeway to lessen their efforts when the cost is high. A cap-and-trade program can be designed to capture many of those time-related efficiencies by incorporating design features that prevent large fluctuations in the price of allowances (for example, a floor and a ceiling on allowance prices).
• A cap-and-trade program, like a tax on CO₂ emissions, could raise a significant amount of revenue because the value of the allowances created under such a program would probably be substantial. For example, in 2012, the value of the emission allowances that would be issued under S. 2191 would be roughly $145 billion, CBO estimates. As the cap that is included in that legislation became more stringent over time, the value of the allowances would grow. A key decision for policymakers is whether to sell emission allowances, thereby capturing their value in the form of federal revenue, or give them away.
• Under a cap-and-trade program, firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances but instead would pass them along to their customers in the form of higher prices. Such price increases would stem from the restriction on emissions and would occur regardless of whether the government sold emission allowances or gave them away. Indeed, the price increases would be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program because they would be the most important mechanism through which businesses and households would be encouraged to make investments and behavioral changes that reduced CO₂ emissions.
• Policymakers’ decisions about whether to sell or give away the allowances could significantly affect the overall economic cost of capping CO₂ emissions and the way gains and losses from such a program were distributed among U.S. households. A policy of giving away rather than selling a large share of the allowances could be more costly to the economy and impose disproportionately large burdens on low-income households.
  • Evidence suggests that the cost to the economy of a 15 percent cut in U.S. emissions (not counting any benefits from mitigating climate change) might be more than twice as large if policymakers gave allowances away than if they sold them and used the revenue to lower current taxes on capital that discourage economic activity.
  • In addition, providing allowances free of charge to energy producers and energy-intensive firms could create “windfall profits” for relatively high income shareholders of those companies, even though the emission cap would be likely to cause price increases that would disproportionately affect people at the lower end of the income scale. Further, allocating allowances without charge would not prevent the loss of jobs in affected industries because such firms would probably reduce their output in response to higher prices for carbon-intensive goods and services. Those job losses, in turn, would impose concentrated income losses in some households and communities. In contrast, if the government chose to sell emission allowances, it could use some of the revenue from those sales to offset the disproportionate economic burden that higher prices would impose on low-income households and to provide transitional assistance to dislocated workers.
• CBO has concluded that the federal budget should record the value of allowances that are given away by the government if the recipients of the allowances could readily convert them into cash. In particular, the budget should record the value of those allowances, when they are distributed, as both revenues and outlays. That procedure, which CBO has already applied in its estimates for S. 2191, underscores that giving away allowances is economically equivalent to auctioning the allowances and then dedicating the proceeds to the recipients.

CBO has issued a cost estimate of S. 2191, the America’s Climate Security Act of 2007, as ordered reported by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in December 2007. We’ve also issued a cost estimate on a slightly amended version of the legislation that was transmitted to us on April 9, 2008.

The legislation would create a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. (Technically, there would be two separate cap-and-trade programs—a bigger one covering most types of greenhouse gases and a smaller one covering hydrofluorocarbons.) Some of the permits would be auctioned — through a new entity, the Climate Change Credit Corporation — and the remaining permits would be distributed at no charge to states and other recipients. Over the 40 years that the proposed cap-and-trade programs would be in effect, the number of allowances and emissions of the relevant gases would be reduced each year.

CBO estimates that enacting S. 2191 as it was ordered reported would increase revenues by about $1.2 trillion over the 2009-2018 period. Over that period, we estimate that direct spending from distributing those proceeds would also total about $1.2 trillion, but more than the revenues. The net effect of the original legislation (as ordered reported) would be to increase deficits (excluding any effects on future discretionary spending) by an estimated $15 billion over the next 10 years; the amended version would instead reduce future deficits (again excluding any effects on future discretionary spending) by roughly $80 billion over the next ten years. In addition, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts, CBO estimates that implementing S. 2191 would increase discretionary spending by about $4 billion under the original legislation and about $80 billion under the amended version over the 2009-2018 period.

The estimates for the two versions of the bill differ because the amendment would increase the portion of allowances that would be auctioned, deposit some of the auction proceeds into a Climate Change Deficit Reduction Fund, and make spending from that fund subject to appropriation.

This complex legislation posed several scoring questions and challenges:

• The first involved how to treat the corporation it creates; the Climate Change Credit Corporation would be responsible for auctioning the allowances created by the federal government and for spending the resulting proceeds on various initiatives. How to treat the Corporation, though, seemed relatively straightforward: The Corporation would be part of the federal government, and the cash flows associated with auctioning the allowances and spending the proceeds should therefore be recorded in the federal budget.

• A second scoring question involved the emissions allowances that are given away at no charge. In CBO’s view, these should also be recorded in the budget as revenues and outlays. The government is essential to the existence of the allowances and is responsible for their readily realizable monetary value through its enforcement of the cap on emissions. The allowances would trade in a liquid secondary market since firms or households could buy and sell them, and thus they would be similar to cash. CBO estimates that the value of the market created by the major cap-and-trade program would be large, exceeding $100 billion in 2012. Therefore, CBO considers the distribution of such allowances at no charge to be functionally equivalent to distributing cash.

In our view, this scoring approach best illuminates the trade-offs between different policy choices. Distributing allowances at no charge to specific firms or individuals is, in effect, equivalent to collecting revenue from an auction of the allowances and then distributing the auction proceeds to those firms or individuals. In other words, the government could either raise $100 by selling allowances and then give that amount in cash to particular businesses and individuals, or it could simply give $100 worth of allowances to those businesses and individuals, who could immediately and easily transform the allowances into cash through the secondary market. Treating allowances that are issued at no charge as both a revenue and an outlay would mean that those two equivalent transactions were reflected in parallel ways in the scoring process.

In contrast, the proceeds associated with the allowances allocated for free to producers and importers under the smaller cap-and-trade program covering hydrofluorocarbons should not be recorded on the budget in CBO’s view, primarily because we expect that the market created for such allowances would be relatively small and illiquid. Based on information from industry representatives, CBO estimates that fewer than 30 entities would be considered covered entities under this program. And given our estimate of the price for consumption allowances, CBO expects that the size and value of the overall market created by the cap-and-trade program for hydrofluorarbons would be small—less than $2 billion annually in most years. Therefore, unlike the allowances for the other greenhouse gases, these allowances would not be sufficiently cash-like to merit inclusion in the federal budget, in CBO’s view.

• A third scoring challenge involved the technical process of estimating the permit price for the main cap-and-trade program, which would cover carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Based on an analysis of the results of several economic models, our estimates suggest that under the legislation, the auction price of emission allowances for these greenhouse gases would rise from about $23 per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (mt CO₂e) emissions in 2009 to about $44 per mt CO₂e in 2018. (In 2006 dollars, the auction price per mt CO₂e would rise from about $21 in 2009 to $35 in 2018.) Covered emissions of group I gases would decline by 7 percent in 2012 and by 17 percent in 2018 from base-case emissions (that is, those that would occur under current law); over the entire 2012-2050 period, they would decline by 42 percent from the base case.

• A final issue involved the longstanding methodology in the federal budget process to assume that overall economic activity (GDP) is held constant.  Under that assumption, higher amounts of indirect business charges reduce other income in the economy. (For example, if firms that must purchase allowances would be unable to pass those costs along, their profits would fall. More likely, some substantial portion would be passed along to others in the economy, such as consumers and employees, and other income would fall. Either way, the result would be lower taxable income in the economy, which would reduce federal revenues from income and payroll taxes.)  The tradition is to assume that 25 percent of any change in indirect business charges is offset by changes in income and payroll taxes (25 percent is an approximate marginal tax rate).  For this estimate, CBO did not apply the 25 percent reduction to all of the gross revenues, however, depending on how those revenues would be used:
  • To the extent that the revenues would be used in ways that would generate new taxable income, such uses would offset the loss of income and payroll taxes that would result from the initial purchase of allowances.  Therefore, CBO did not apply the 25 percent reduction to any revenues that would be used to make transfer payments to taxable entities without any conditions placed on the recipient regarding the use of those payments. While such transfer payments do not directly affect GDP because they are not made in exchange for goods or services, they are typically taxable. Thus, providing transfers to taxable entities generates additional federal revenue that would essentially offset the 25 percent reduction in revenue collections. Most of the estimated revenues from allowances given away under S. 2191 would be used for such purposes.
  • CBO also did not apply the 25 percent reduction in revenues to any allowances that would be given away under the bill and would not be immediately taxable to the individuals or businesses that receive them, but would generate taxable income when they were used or sold to others. Such allowances include those given away to facilities that generate electric power from fossil fuels and to facilities that produce or import petroleum-based fuel.
  • In contrast, we applied the 25 percent reduction to any revenues that would be spent by the government on goods and services (for example, on research and development activities) because such government spending would substitute for other economic activity (under the assumption that GDP is unchanged by the bill). As a result, revenue used in this way would not generate any new taxable income. All of the proceeds from the auction of allowances would be used for those purposes.

The two cost estimates provide much more information about the legislation and its projected effects.

Analyzing a complicated piece of legislation like this requires resources from across the agency. CBO has formed a climate change team, and more information about CBO’s activities on climate change can be found here. The cost estimates and the associated mandate statements were prepared by Mark Booth, Susanne S. Mehlman, Deborah Reis, Megan Carroll, Kathleen Gramp, Tyler Kruzich, Robert G. Shackleton Jr., Mark J. Lasky, Terry Dinan, Natalie Tawil, Neil Hood, and Amy Petz.