{"id":4507,"date":"2014-01-23T11:03:15","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T16:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/?p=4507"},"modified":"2014-01-24T10:41:43","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T15:41:43","slug":"why-the-cost-of-carbon-pollution-is-both-too-high-and-too-low","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2014\/01\/23\/why-the-cost-of-carbon-pollution-is-both-too-high-and-too-low\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the cost of carbon pollution is both too high and too low"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This post <\/em>originally appeared<\/em> <\/em>on<\/em> EDF Voices<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Tell someone you are a \u201cclimate economist,\u201d and the first thing you hear after the slightly puzzled looks subside is, \u201cHow much<\/em>?\u201d Show me the money: \u201cHow much is climate change really costing us?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Here it is: at least $40.<\/p>\n

That, of course, isn\u2019t the total cost, which is in the trillions of dollars. $40 is the cost per ton of carbon dioxide pollution emitted today, and represents the financial impacts of everything climate change wreaks: higher medical bills, lost productivity at work, rising seas, and more. Every American, all 300 million of us, emit around twenty of these $40-tons per year.<\/p>\n

The number comes from none other than the U.S. government in an effort to uncover the true cost of carbon pollution. This exercise was first conducted in 2010. It involved a dozen government agencies and departments, several dozen experts, and a\u00a0fifty-page<\/a>, densely crafted \u201ctechnical support document,\u201d replete with some seventy, peer-reviewed references and an even more technical appendix.<\/p>\n

Cass Sunstein<\/a>, the Harvard legal scholar of\u00a0Nudge<\/em>\u00a0fame, who was co-leading the process for the White House at the time, recently declared himself\u00a0positively surprised<\/a>\u00a0how the usual interest-group politics were all-but absent from the discussions throughout that process. This is how science should be done to help guide public policy.<\/p>\n

The cost of carbon pollution is too low<\/b><\/p>\n

The number originally reached in 2010 wasn\u2019t $40. It was a bit more than half as much. What happened? In short, the scientific understanding of the\u00a0impacts of rising seas<\/a>\u00a0had advanced by so much, and the peer-reviewed, economic models had finally caught up to the scientific understanding circa 2007, that a routine update of the cost of carbon number resulted in the rather dramatic increase to near $40 per ton. (There are twenty pages of additional\u00a0scientific prose<\/a>, if you want to know the details.)<\/p>\n

In other words, we had been seriously underestimating the cost of climate change all along. That\u2019s the exact opposite of what you hear from those who want to ignore the problem, and the $40 itself is still woefully conservative.\u00a0Some large companies<\/a>, including the likes of Exxon, are voluntarily using a higher price internally for their capital investment decisions.<\/p>\n

And everything we know about the science points to the fact that the $40 figure has\u00a0nowhere to go but up<\/a>. The more we know, the higher the costs. And even\u00a0what we don\u2019t know<\/a>pushes the costs higher still.<\/p>\n

Howard Shelanski<\/a>, Sunstein\u2019s successor as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA, pronounced \u201coh-eye-ruh\u201d), has since presided over a\u00a0further update<\/a>\u00a0of the official number. In fact, this one didn\u2019t incorporate any of the latest science. It was simply a minor technical correction of the prior update, resulting in a $1 revision downward. (The precise number is now $37, though I still say $40 at cocktail parties, to avoid a false sense of precision. Yes, that\u2019s what a climate economist talks about at cocktail parties.)<\/p>\n

And once again, it all demonstrated just how science ought to be done: Sometimes it advances because newer and better, peer-reviewed publications become available. Sometimes it advances because someone discovers and fixes a small mathematical error.<\/p>\n

Your input is needed<\/b><\/p>\n

While announcing the correction, Shelanski added another layer of transparency and an\u00a0opportunity for further refinements<\/a>\u00a0of the numbers: a formal call for public comments on the way the cost of carbon figure is calculated, open through January 27<\/del> February 26th.<\/p>\n

We are taking this opportunity seriously. EDF, together with our partners at the Natural Resource Defense Council, New York University School of Law\u2019s Institute for Policy Integrity, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, is submitting\u00a0formal, technical comments<\/a>\u00a0in support of the administration\u2019s use of the cost of carbon pollution number as well as recommending further revisions to reflect the latest science.<\/p>\n

The bottom line, as economists like to put it, is that carbon pollution costs society a lot of money. So as the technical experts trade scientific papers, you can help by reminding our leaders in Washington that\u00a0we need strong, science-based climate policies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update (on January 24th<\/sup>):<\/strong> The official comment period just was extended for another month, through February 26th<\/sup>. More time to show your support<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This post originally appeared on EDF Voices) Tell someone you are a \u201cclimate economist,\u201d and the first thing you hear after the slightly puzzled looks subside is, \u201cHow much?\u201d Show me the money: \u201cHow much is climate change really costing us?\u201d Here it is: at least $40. That, of course, isn\u2019t the total cost, which …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,202,42,397],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-greenhouse-gas-emissions","category-science","category-truth-squad"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy the cost of carbon pollution is both too high and too low - Climate 411<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2014\/01\/23\/why-the-cost-of-carbon-pollution-is-both-too-high-and-too-low\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why the cost of carbon pollution is both too high and too low - Climate 411\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(This post originally appeared on EDF Voices) Tell someone you are a \u201cclimate economist,\u201d and the first thing you hear after the slightly puzzled looks subside is, \u201cHow much?\u201d Show me the money: \u201cHow much is climate change really costing us?\u201d Here it is: at least $40. 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