Advice to the Biden administration as it seeks to account for mounting losses from storms, wildfires and other climate impacts.
By Gernot Wagner, David Anthoff, Maureen Cropper, Simon Dietz, Kenneth T. Gillingham, Ben Groom, J. Paul Kelleher, Frances C. Moore & James H. Stock
One of the first executive orders US President Joe Biden signed in January began a process to revise the social cost of carbon (SCC). This metric is used in cost–benefit analyses to inform climate policy. It puts a monetary value on the harms of climate change, by tallying all future damages incurred globally from the emission of one tonne of carbon dioxide now.
[…]
Here we set out eight steps so that the US SCC can pass muster legally, guide climate policy and win trust at home and abroad. It must reflect the latest and best science and economics. All assumptions — ethical and otherwise — must be made explicit.
Full text: “Eight priorities for calculating the social cost of carbon” (PDF)
Citation:
Wagner, Gernot, David Anthoff, Maureen Cropper, Simon Dietz, Kenneth T. Gillingham, Ben Groom, J. Paul Kelleher, Frances C. Moore & James H. Stock. “Eight priorities for calculating the social cost of carbon,” Nature 590 (25 February 2021): 548-550.
Related Bloomberg Green Risky Climate column: “A tale of two carbon prices” (19 February 2021)
Related: “A tale of two carbon prices,” Bloomberg Green Risky Climate column (19 February 2021); “Recalculate the social cost of carbon,” Nature Climate Change (29 March 2021); “Improving the social cost of nitrous oxide,” Nature Climate Change (17 November 2021).
Featured in:
Nowogrodzki, Anna. “How climate coverage can drive change.” Nature News (1 November 2021). DOI:10.1038/d41586-021-03002-7