How Should We Calculate the Social Cost of Carbon? Researchers Offer Roadmap in New Analysis
In a newly published analysis, a team of researchers lists a series of measures the administration should consider in recalculating the social cost of carbon--a cost-benefit metric that places a monetary value on the impact of climate change.
The Biden administration is revising the social cost of carbon (SCC), a decade-old cost-benefit metric used to inform climate policy by placing a monetary value on the impact of climate change. In a newly published analysis in the journal Nature, a team of researchers lists a series of measures the administration should consider in recalculating the SCC.
[...] The revised SCC will be created by the federal government's Interagency Working Group (IWG), which includes the Council of Economic Advisors, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
[...] the authors [...] list several recommendations for the IWG to consider in devising the new SCC. Among them are the following:
- Reinstating the estimated economic cost of CO2 emitted to $50 a ton, which the Trump administration lowered to $1-7 a ton
- Updating the damage functions that tally how climate change affects human welfare, from crop losses to heat impacting student learning and worker productivity
- Incorporating the inequitable effects of climate change within and across countries
- Reviewing discount rates—the ways in which the cost of future climate-related damages are priced in today's dollars—in order to better inform today's budgetary processes
- Updating forecasts for both economic and population growth—both of which affect predictions of emissions and related environmental impact
Journal Reference:
Gernot Wagner, David Anthoff, Maureen Cropper, et al. Eight priorities for calculating the social cost of carbon, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/d41586-021-00441-0)
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 22 2021, @07:24PM (16 children)
How to calculate the cost of anything:
1) does it benefit me? Yes / No
2) how much?
3) argue as strongly as possible to bring as much influence as possible through public information (and misinformation) campaigns, government lobbying, public and private trade deals, overt and covert wars and whatever else falls within the realm of the possible to maximize total benefit to _me_ while minimizing negatives.
Capitalism, in a nutshell.
Touchy-feely Paris climate accords can be, and are, openly ignored at the whim of any two bit right winger who gets a little power.
Don't kid yourselves that the opposing candidates play it all clean for the maximum benefit of mankind's future - the same horse traders are at work, they just have different public images.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday February 22 2021, @07:31PM (7 children)
Exactly. This is why trannies are getting so much pandering right now: Because big healthcare and Jew-run big pharma are rubbing their hands together at the handsome profits they will make from expensive taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries and lifetime drug regimens.
Transgenderism and mass-vaccinations are a new form of AIDS, or an opiate crisis, in which the Jews needed additional long-term taxpayer-funded revenue streams after they were slapped on the wrist for hooking America on junk. Next is will be climate change. And, after that, whatever their Hollywood writers can dream up.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 22 2021, @08:42PM (5 children)
Doesn't matter what racial slurs you put on the players... if you've got your tinfoil hat aligned properly you can clearly see that the false choice of Left vs Right is being kept in a virtual balance of power which is the way to stagnate real change - and that's what keeps the people at the top of the status quo happy: lack of change.
It's more insidious than big players donating to both sides of the aisle, it's alignment of the platforms to ensure that neither side gets more than a few years of majority and even when they get that it's a slim majority before swinging back the other way, "undoing" each others' new policies every 4 to 8 years when the real agenda is to keep the status quo.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @08:58PM (4 children)
Republicans bring the wrath of Mother Earth to smite them. How is that any different than when some famous preacher said New Orleans was hit by a hurricane for allowing sinful fornication in New Orleans? Same brainless crap that doesn't stand up to a second's worth of scrutiny. Today's Democrats are America's Religious Fundamentalists.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @09:22PM
Sorry, parent post (before Soylent messed up and refused my post the first time, making me reload the page and look for the post to reply to it AGAIN) was in reply to this comment:
"I'll believe in Climate Change when Texas freezes over" - Ted Cruz
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 22 2021, @11:07PM (2 children)
Republicans thumb their nose at Mother Nature and get smacked down, predictably.
20 years ago, we paid a Houston plumber to repipe our house - he had started in the trade 20 years earlier when an "unusual, but not that unusual" storm had frozen a bunch of pipes all over Houston leading to more work than the tradesmen could handle for a long time.
Now, 40 years after that last "unusual storm" here we are again with a bunch of frozen pipes, because the tradesmen either are too lazy or ignorant to insulate pipes properly, the code inspectors are definitely too lazy to inspect, house inspectors? HA!, plus all that wonderful high quality owner-builder DIY work in the great state of Tehaz, and wha'cha'got this time? Another several billion dollars of work to clean up a mess that could have been prevented for less than 1% of the cost.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @11:27PM (1 child)
I don't know why you are picking on Texas for that. Something that happens once every 40 years is simply not going to be addressed in construction. That's the way PEOPLE EVERYWHERE roll.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 23 2021, @03:50AM
People know better, but lack the discipline to demand that extra 1% expense up front, on the chance that it won't bite them before they move on and it becomes somebody else's problem.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @09:52PM
Ethanol, come on man. Don't tell them we are onto them.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @07:39PM (5 children)
"I'll believe in Climate Change when Texas freezes over" - Ted Cruz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @08:53PM (4 children)
Is that why we aren't calling it Global Warming anymore?
(Score: 1) by Derf the on Tuesday February 23 2021, @09:23AM (3 children)
Because continuously calling it 'global warming induced climate change' becomes unnecessarily verbose once the audience becomes familiar with the labels meaning; indeed 'climate change' nice and succinctly focuses the label on the main problem space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @12:41PM (2 children)
Democrats can then blame *any* weather event at all on "climate change." They literally blame Republicans for bad weather.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @04:41PM
Only Democrats are allowed to blame weather on climate change. When Republicans do it, we tell them "Weather is not climate, dumbass".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @10:12PM
If by literally you mean typical Republican slanted industries like oil and gas, then yes? What is with all the super offended outrage from Republicans whenever someone points out reality, don't you types enjoy taking personal responsibility for your actions?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @09:39PM
I was going to say the government should offer to buy carbons for $50 a ton.
You couldn't afford to ship it for $50 a ton.
Unless maybe they could make a pipeline...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @10:19PM
You are correct. Space is water. Sound is the glue.
CO2 doesn't even exist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @08:19PM
If the US increases immigration, they increase the number of USA super carbon emitters. To reduce global warming, immigration should be minimized for every country but Mongolia https://ourworldindata.org/per-capita-co2 [ourworldindata.org]
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday February 22 2021, @08:43PM (9 children)
As long as China and India are the 2 biggest polluters how much difference will it make if the USA and Europe cuts emissions by, say, 30%? What is the economic cost to the USA/Europe to cut those emissions, as opposed to the economic benefits to China/India to ignore them?
It makes me laugh when, say, California makes a rule that (maybe) cuts greenhouse gasses (usually transferring them somewhere else or raising taxes/fees) when you realize that anything an individual state does is political posturing.
Carbon tax? Another way the 1% can spent $10k on a tax attorney to save 7-8 figure incomes in taxes. Meanwhile, you and I can spend $300 on our tax programs/attorneys/whatever to maybe break even.
This is literally the world wide race to the bottom. I bet my economy can withstand the zombie invasion better than your economy can.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @09:06PM (2 children)
Per capita, the US emits far more than China or India, and during the 4 year Trump climate lapse did either China or India drop comments because the US dropped theirs?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @09:25PM (1 child)
The earth doesn't care about per capita, just total output.
Mother Earth doesn't give a shit about "equity." The coal emissions and industry are in India and China.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @04:44PM
Thanks for your insight, dumbass.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Monday February 22 2021, @10:06PM (2 children)
Put a carbon tax and sudenly China and India imports become unaffordable, local clean manufacturing gets a boost, and everyone is happy (apart from the Chinese who can't sell to anyone)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @06:52AM (1 child)
is suddenly "competitive" - or, in other words, now everything's unaffordable. The tax won't make the local stuff cheaper, and if it falls short of making it "competitive" china still wins the price war but now splits the proceeds with the taxman.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday February 24 2021, @05:20PM
Domestic salaries increase as manufacturing returns, more incentive for automation so high skilled jobs are boosted as well as lower skilled. More economic activity domestically, fewer imports, it's all good.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 23 2021, @03:41AM (2 children)
So a bit of game theory seems relevant here. Each of the nations that spew enough emissions to matter are all basically stuck making the same choice:
1. We convince everybody else to cut their emissions, but don't cut ours. Result: We may not be screwed, and will have better economic numbers than our competitors.
2. We cut our emissions to negligible level, and nobody else does. Result: We're all screwed.
3. Nobody cuts their emissions. Result: We're all screwed, quicker than all other scenarios, but hey, we made some imaginary numbers look good for a few more years!
4. Everybody cuts their emissions: Result: We're not completely screwed.
And because the world leaders think no further than a few years ahead and often closer to the next quarter ahead, most are choosing the "don't cut our emissions" options. The international agreements are basically an effort to choose option 1 while pretending to choose option 4. The big exception is the EU, but they're cutting emissions mostly as a byproduct of trying to weaken Russia's ability to cause trouble for them by cutting off oil and gas pipelines from the Persian Gulf and Caucusus.
And the nutty thing, of course, is that addressing climate change, while expensive, is much cheaper than consequences like "Florida doesn't exist anymore".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @04:46PM (1 child)
Here's some more theory: Asia is going to be fucked waaay more by rising sea level than the West. Your move Asia.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 23 2021, @06:09PM
Does that even matter, though?
The end result of global climate change is that the planet ends up completely uninhabitable by humans. As in, it's less survivable than a nuclear war. In that scenario, it doesn't really matter which humans were the last pocket still alive. So the "we're boned, but you're boned more" argument doesn't make any sense at all.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @09:16PM (5 children)
These idiots don't seem to realize that the only solution to global warming is snipping a few third-world nutsacks off. Stop the vermin from breeding, get global population under control, and then we can talk about inconveniencing first-world people with more taxes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @10:45PM (2 children)
Thread Godwinned that quickly? Guess I shouldn't be surprised, this IS soylent news after all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @12:23AM (1 child)
Not technically a Godwin no mention or comparison to Natzis or Hitler
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @10:15PM
Technically you are correct, besides what's a little locker room eugenics?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @05:20AM
Maybe those Amazon drones can be used to quickly do the job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @04:52PM
You're right of course. But how do we incentivize appropriately? Now hear me out. We need to make nutsack collectibles. Give them away in kids' cereal boxes to generate some buzz then charge for the premium models. I'm thinking product lines, little houses, hairstyles, fashion pieces. That shit sells.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Monday February 22 2021, @09:17PM (5 children)
Remember when China first started to liberalize commerce? They stuffed the rest of liberalism back in the bottle at Tienamen, so given that they kept an authoritarian structure, consider the lost opportunity.
At the time that all went down, China was still the land of the bicycle. For decades westerners had looked down on it, but just as climate became an issue they traded all their bikes for cars. If you go back and read through the archives, there are some truly sad accounts of people from Beijing remarking how it was no longer pleasant to ride through the city, at a time when car ownership was just beginning to tick up.
Consider the lost opportunity--a command economy that could have forced its citizens to keep on biking, electric cars only, railways could have been powered by nuke plants, etc.
This is why I never much cared for these international agreements. They were never green agreements. They were always China growth agreements couched in "fairness" of allowing them to "catch up". What a complete and utter lack of vision.
If there is a way to build a green economy from the ground up in a major economic power, we'll never know. The China experiment was never even considered.
So. Whatever. I don't care about these accords. You might as well burn the paper they're written on, and not care how much carbon that emits.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @09:49PM (1 child)
There is a reason China is #1 in pollution. The 'west' shipped it there. Then the 'west' claims how amazing they are because they no longer pollute!
China on the other hand saw an opportunity. Seize the means of production. What you cant buy enough of something because all of the factories in china said fuck you? Well, pound sand.
We outsourced our pollution to China. China *gladly* took it because it meant all of those factories went there. They can then dictate terms on what gets made and what doesnt.
What you think it was about helping them? That is what they sold it as. What it really was is pollution regs are expensive. China just looked the other way and pay someone a few bucks a month or grab someone out of their 'reeducation camps' to do it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @11:31PM
It was not just outsourcing pollution why things were outsourced to China. The other factor was that the peasants pouring in from the Chinese countryside worked for PEANUTS. And almost all of China was peasants. Now, after decades of growth and increase in living standards, Chinese workers are not so cheap. Even the Chinese have been outsourcing to other countries with cheaper labor such as Vietnam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @04:41AM
The west didn't outsource pollution to China, we outsourced jobs and prosperity. As a developing nation, China had the right to pollute, and it was expeditious and profitable to do so. They care so little for anything or anyone else, that you really can't expect them to be good neighbors. This is a world war, only almost nobody seems to see it that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @06:58AM (1 child)
Did you ask them if they wanted to be part of your social experiment? Or do you think its okay to use a whole country as a test subject against their will?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @03:49PM
Against their will! That's the whole backbone of communism. It's the CCP, remember?
(Score: 1) by js290 on Tuesday February 23 2021, @04:18AM