Social Distance, Meet Social Carbon

Federal Agency/Executive Branch, Federal Regulation, Opinions, Policy, White House

February 19, 2021

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by Zack Coleman (Politico’s Morning Energy) The White House is expected to sharply raise the government’s calculation of how much greenhouse gases will cost the U.S. in the future, a policy change that will make it easier for his administration to justify more stringent regulations as he seeks to green the economy, Pro’s Lorraine Woellert reports.

That “social cost of carbon” is an effort to measure the economic and societal damage caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the coming decades and even centuries. It provides an estimate of the rising health costs caused by climate change, property damage from flooding, and business losses due to extreme weather, for example. The number will be baked into the administration’s number-crunching on the costs and benefits of regulation. “These are the costs we don’t see,” said Paula DiPerna, a special advisor to CDP, a global platform used by companies to disclose climate data. “It sounds like a punishing — but actually it’s an illuminating — tool, like a flashlight in a dark cave.”

Former President Donald Trump had pegged the cost at $8 a ton. Former President Barack Obama, whose administration was first to use the figure, had calculated a price of $56 a ton. Today’s number will be temporary, fulfilling a promise in Biden’s Inauguration Day executive order on climate change. A working group will come up with a more permanent calculation by January. READ MORE

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