Late last month, the Biden administration quietly released an update of the government’s “social cost of carbon” (SCC) estimate, a metric used to value the benefits of global warming policies, especially regulations. The update hasn’t received much attention yet, but it will be important in justifying the administration’s climate agenda in the months ahead.
That’s concerning because the new numbers have some big problems.
As background, the social cost of carbon assesses the impact on “social welfare” from emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is used as an input in regulatory analysis to decide whether expensive global warming policies are worth their cost.
The Biden team likely issued a rapid-release update of the SCC because a more credible estimate will take time to develop, and they don’t want to slow their ambitious climate agenda during the politically opportune early days of a new administration. As such, they are reverting to previous Obama-era calculations, casting aside numbers the Trump administration used.
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