by Yudi Sherman at AFLDS Frontline News
The United States Supreme Court Thursday upheld the Biden administration’s “social cost of carbon” (SCC) initiative, which aims to put a price tag on each ton of carbon emissions. The initiative was just one of several executive orders Biden signed on his first day in the White House, along with other climate change-related actions such as shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline.
“It is essential that agencies capture the full costs of greenhouse gas emissions as accurately as possible, including by taking global damages into account,” read the executive order.
“The ‘social cost of carbon (SCC), ‘social cost of nitrous oxide’ (SCN), and ‘social cost of methane’ (SCM) are estimates of the monetized damages associated with incremental increases in greenhouse gas emissions,” the order continued before mentioning that knowing the cost is necessary to calculate the costs and benefits of “regulatory and other actions”.
“An accurate social cost is essential for agencies to accurately determine the social benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions when conducting cost-benefit analyses of regulatory and other actions.”
Biden also created a new agency for the project, called Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases.
The Obama administration had estimated the cost of each ton of carbon emission to be $52…
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