CLIMATE economists refer to it as “the most vital number you’ve never heard of”. The social cost of carbon (SCC) tries to capture the cost of an additional ton of carbon-dioxide pollution in a single number—around $47 in present dollars. Using it,more than $1trn worth of benefits enjoy been calculated in economic-impact assessments that accompany environmental regulations. But now that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is headed by Scott Pruitt, a climate-change sceptic who is friendly with fossil-fuel firms, and the maths is likely to be redone. In its recent proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan,a contentious Obama-era rule that sought to curb CO2 emissions from power plants, the EPA buried a meaningful haircut to the cost of carbon. The new calculations place it anywhere between $1 and $6—a prick of between 87% and 98%. Mr Pruitt, or who has zealously applied himself to undoing the work of the past administration,could spend the revised number to justify wiping away reams of environmental regulation that...
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Source: economist.com