The Obama climate move that nobody noticed

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http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-obama-climate-move-that-nobody-noticed/

***SNIP


How much damage does a ton of carbon emissions do? That dollar figure is known as the “social cost of carbon” and it is, as economist Frank Ackerman put it a few yeas ago, “the most important number you’ve never heard of.”

Why does it matter? Because the U.S. government uses it to assess the costs and benefits of regulatory action. The higher the social cost of carbon, the more action can be economically justified.

Specifically, regulations are assessed by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). (There are reasons to lament that process, but put them aside for now.) The OMB runs cost-benefit analysis on every big regulation that issues from the executive branch.

One thing Obama doesn’t get enough credit for is the Interagency Working Group on Social Cost of Carbon, which his administration convened to establish a social cost of carbon that OMB and other agencies can use in assessing carbon-related regulations. In 2010, the working group released its report [PDF]. While there’s no single, final number given as a social cost of carbon — there’s a range, depending on discount rates and estimates of climate impacts — the number “in the middle,” the one that became the headline, was $24. (That’s for 2015; it rises year on year.)

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1. This is another way of saying

...that bankers have the final say when evaluating any trend in the world today. The love of money is so absolute that people in DC and Wall St. refuse to evaluate anything on its own merits, and even the numeracy of physical science gets papered-over by the values of irrational exuberance, consumerism-as-public-policy, austerity (because housing and healthcare are less important than throw-away merchandise), derivatives, systemic fraud and impunity... all that "magic hand" stuff.

There is only one way I can think of to decently reconcile the wold of money with a material catastrophe like AGW: A sin tax. Since sin taxes are based on people's ability to pay, it keeps money within its proper social meaning instead of de-contextualizing it as a conversion metric for scientific data.

Since the unit of measure is scientifically invalid, those employing the unit conversion are charlatans by definition.

[Socialistlemur]

2. If it doesn't cost money or ruin lives its hardly a catastrophe

I don't think they can quantify lost lives due to carbon emissions. They can faintly try to do it for carbon. I do wonder why they leave out methane. And will they issue a positive score for sulfur dioxide? It cools the planet.

I think they'll have to adjust the number as time goes by, but the key step would be to use a carbon tax rather than a gasoline tax. Just tax all fuels according to the carbon emissions. I bet this encourages biofuels.

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3. Supposedly all significant GHGs are accounted-for

...according to their 'CO2e' carbon-dioxide equivalent. Some GHGs have carbon (like methane) while others like nitrogen oxide don't.

The problem with methane is that we may be grossly underestimating emissions due to leakage from the gas industry. And if they give credits for sulphur dioxide, it could be perverse because emitting that gas might contribute to acid raid and deforestation.

Carbon tax is an interesting subject. The proposals I've seen would eliminate some portion (or all) of the income tax, shifting it to carbon tax. Meanwhile most road taxes could be shifted from gas/diesel to income tax for other reasons.