Twelve states have asked a Federal Court to keep federal agencies from using the so-called Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases to calculate the benefits of emission reduction regulations. The new cost estimates, ordered by President Biden on day one, claim enormous distant future damages from today’s emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. The Social Cost of Carbon has been around for some time. Now Biden has brought it back and made it worse.
The fundamental absurdity of the Social Cost of Carbon is that it goes out 300 years to get the supposed economic damages due to today’s minor emissions of carbon dioxide. That’s right, these computer models claim to know what the world’s economy will be for the next 300 years. The claim is absurd because technological and economic progress make the future world unknowable. Consider what America was like 300 years ago.
To begin with America did not yet exist. Given that the pace of technological change has increased our future is probably even less knowable. It is the only way they can get serious future damages out of the computer models. In 300 years the global economy grows tremendously, just as it did in the last 300 years.
In cost benefit analysis, future costs are discounted back to present value, sort of like reverse compound interest. The further into the future a given amount of damage is, the less it is worth today. They even claim to know the cumulative 300 year economic damages due to our emissions to an exact dollar per ton amount. Given the scam it is no surprise that this amount corresponds to the amount of proposed carbon taxes.
Moreover, it increases every year, just like the proposed taxes and carbon control regulations. Biden widened the scam by adding the Social Cost of Methane . Natural gas is mostly methane so this is part of the new war on gas. The Agriculture Department, which regulates cows, is included in the Social Cost executive order, so they are being sued along with EPA and a bunch of other regulatory agencies.
Skeptics argue that methane is a trivial greenhouse gas, especially because it competes with water which is by far the dominant GHG. Alarmist want us to stop eating beef and dairy products, as well as killing natural gas, so methane gets a big Social Cost estimate. In its way the State’s lawsuit extends well beyond the incredibly stupid Social Cost issue. Biden has issued a raft of potentially punitive climate EO’s.
Executive orders are only supposed to affect internal Executive Branch operations. The States point out quite correctly that requiring rule making federal agencies to use Social Cost will have a tremendously adverse effect on the American people.
Source: David Wojick | CFACT
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