Biden pushes more control freak climate policies

 Washington Examiner:

President Biden is directing his team to retool the values the government uses to assess the costs and benefits of combating climate change in a move that could ultimately help his administration justify stricter emissions controls.

As part of a climate executive order issued on Wednesday, Biden directed federal agencies to review and update the so-called “social cost of carbon" in an effort to reduce climate pollution.

The metric was initially developed by the Obama administration to quantify the costs of global damages caused by rising temperatures. Federal agencies would then use that value as they assess the overall costs and benefits of regulatory actions. Regulations that curb greenhouse gas emissions, therefore, would produce benefits by avoiding climate-related damages.

Without the social cost of carbon to account for the costs of greenhouse gas emissions and the benefits of reducing them, “you’re actually missing a big piece of that analysis and missing some of the real benefits of costs of the actions you might take,” said Kevin Rennert, who directs the think tank Resources for the Future’s social cost of carbon initiative.

“It’s really the social cost of carbon that allows for the federal government to consider the effects of its actions on climate change,” he added.

In his executive order, Biden directs an interagency working group to produce an interim social cost of carbon value within 30 days and a final one by January 2022. The same is ordered for nitrous oxide and methane, two other greenhouse gases.

The Obama administration had set the social cost of carbon at roughly $50 per ton. Under the Trump administration, federal agencies dramatically slashed that value to between $1 and $7 per ton to help it justify rolling back or weakening climate change mandates.

The Trump administration did so by changing two key elements of the metric. It used a higher discount rate, which determines how to weigh the costs people incur in the present with the benefits people would feel in the future. Environmental economists have generally suggested a low discount rate for the social cost of carbon because many of its worst costs won’t be felt for decades.

Secondly, the Trump administration limited the social cost of carbon to look at the costs and benefits only within U.S. borders, as opposed to globally.

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This is an attempt to justify their control freak policies and it overlooks the exorbitant price of not using fossil fuels.  Not using them makes people poorer and makes people reliant on less dependable forms of energy and transportation.  This "social cost" scam will be used to make things more expensive and give the government more totalitarian control over people. Freedom will take a hit under this scheme.