What is the “social cost” of “carbon pollution”? I don’t know either but don’t worry, the president and his radical greens have figured it all out.
The social cost of carbon “tries to add up all the quantifiable costs and benefits of emitting one additional tonne of CO2, in monetary terms. This value can then be used to weigh the benefits of reduced warming against the costs of cutting emission,” according to the Carbon Brief website.
Sounds reasonable, except it’s not. That’s because the “quantifiable costs” are not very “quantifiable” at all. For instance, there is zero scientific evidence that a single hurricane was caused by global warming. But because the theory of global warming posits an increase in hurricanes, damage caused by hurricanes is included in the “social cost” of carbon.
When Donald Trump was president, his administration figured that cost at $7 a ton. If you’re going to pull a number out of the air anyway, $7 a ton sounds about right.
When Joe Biden became president, he raised the social cost of carbon to $51 a ton. At that price, energy-producing states would have lost billions of dollars. They sued.
And a Louisana federal judge agreed.
In a Friday ruling, U.S. District Judge James Cain blocked Biden’s January 2021 executive order that factored in the “social cost” of carbon emissions when creating rules regulating pollution.
Cain sided with Republican attorneys general from energy-producing states who said the administration’s action to raise the cost estimate of carbon emissions threatened to drive up energy costs while decreasing state revenues from energy production.
The judge issued an injunction that bars the Biden administration from using the higher cost estimate, which puts a dollar value on damages caused by every additional ton of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.
How much is an “additional ton” of carbon and how does anyone know it’s “additional” in the first place? That’s another number pulled out of thin air. The whole house of cards of assumptions and guesses is being used to fleece the taxpayer out of trillions of dollars.
The judge left very little wiggle room for the administration to remedy the situation for the states in question.
“Plaintiff States have sufficiently identified the kinds of harms to support injunctive relief,” Cain’s ruling stated. “Moreover, the Court finds that the Plaintiff States have made a clear showing of an injury-in-fact, and that such injury ‘cannot be undone through monetary remedies.'”
“The Court agrees that the public interest and balance of equities weigh heavily in favor of granting a preliminary injunction,” the ruling added.
Related: Judge Tosses Massive Gulf Oil Lease Sale Due to ‘Flawed’ Climate Model
The Biden administration will no doubt fight this ruling. And they’re likely to find a friendly judge to overturn the injunction.
But when the inevitable fuel shortages arise, are Biden and the Democrats going to step bravely forward and take credit for diminishing supplies? Or will they blame it on the evil oil companies?
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