The Biden administration is planning to consider policies that integrate an amplified estimate for the cost of climate change. This was ruled by a panel of judges this Wednesday, which reverses a federal judge’s ruling passed last month.
The said ruling highlights the recent development of the Biden administration; it is an attempt to implement a more than a sevenfold rise in the social cost of carbon. It is a metric that assigns the value of a dollar according to the environmental damages instigated by the release of greenhouse gases.
What does the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals state? What was the last judgment?
The U.S. Court of Appeals corresponding to the Fifth Circuit stated that the federal agencies will be harmed if they are disallowed from employing the provisional estimates in an eight-page order. These estimates are regarding the directions developed by the Transportation Department, Environmental Protection Agency, and many other federal agencies on climate-oriented issues. These provisional estimates were updated in February 2021.
The said decision turns the judgment announced by James D. Cain, the U.S. District Judge of Lake Charles, La., on February 11. The judgment sides with ten states and the Republican attorneys general that sued the Biden administration regarding interim estimates.
In the lawsuit filed on the Biden administration, the states had raised the issue that the rise in the metric will require a large expansion of the federal government’s regulatory powers. This also justifies the extraordinary increase in the governing restrictions on energy, agriculture, and virtually every other sector.
Therefore Judge Cain decided that the states be granted a preliminary injunction. This blocks the utilization of the increase proposed in the metric; meanwhile, the lawsuit unfolds.
What is the use of the social cost of carbon metric?
The social cost of carbon metric is employed to steer various government decisions, including the energy lease sale on federal lands. Last year the Biden administration had tentatively raised the value to $51 per metric ton, which was a drastic increase from $7 per metric ton during the Trump administration.
The administration uses this metric in about 100 new rules and regulations, including the policies related to energy-conservation ratings for houses formulated by the Energy Department. This metric is also used for the multibillion-dollar funding packages related to railroads and mass transit systems maintained by Transportation Department.
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