The social cost of carbon puts a dollar amount on each carbon ton

The United States Supreme Court Thursday upheld the Biden administration’s “social cost of carbon” (SCC) initiative, which aims to put a price tag on each ton of carbon emissions. The initiative was just one of several executive orders Biden signed on his first day in the White House, along with other climate change-related actions such as shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline. 

“It is essential that agencies capture the full costs of greenhouse gas emissions as accurately as possible, including by taking global damages into account,” read the executive order. 

“The ‘social cost of carbon (SCC), ‘social cost of nitrous oxide’ (SCN), and ‘social cost of methane’ (SCM) are estimates of the monetized damages associated with incremental increases in greenhouse gas emissions,” the order continued before mentioning that knowing the cost is necessary to calculate the costs and benefits of “regulatory and other actions”. 

“An accurate social cost is essential for agencies to accurately determine the social benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions when conducting cost-benefit analyses of regulatory and other actions.” 

Biden also created a new agency for the project, called Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases. 

The Obama administration had estimated the cost of each ton of carbon emission to be $52, calculating the cost on a global scale. The Trump administration estimated the SCC to be $1-$7, calculating the cost on a domestic scale. BIden has increased the SCC to $51 while the “Working Group” agency attempts to calculate the actual cost. 

The Supreme Court has now struck down a February ruling from a federal judge which issued an injunction against Biden’s order after it was challenged by a coalition of 10 Republican states. 

Led by Republican Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, the petition against Biden was filed by Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The states contended that the creation of a new agency tasked with calculating a cost that would affect every other agency and their programs should be run by Congress. 

The Supreme Court’s ruling neither explains why it ruled in favor of Biden nor lists the justices opposed. Nevertheless, it is being celebrated by committed globalists like Biden and others who have allied themselves with the World Economic Forum (WEF), which pushes for a global price on carbon emissions. 

“This means that there is one price, applicable all over the world, for the right to emit a tonne of CO2 into the atmosphere - providing a simple and powerful incentive to make the switch to clean energy,” says the WEF on its website. 

At the WEF’s Annual Meeting 2022 in Davos, Switzerland last week, Alibaba Group President J. Michael Evans announced that the company is working on technology that can track each individual’s carbon footprint. 

“We’re developing through technology an ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint,” Evans said at the summit.   

“What does that mean?” he asked rhetorically. “That’s where are they traveling, how are they traveling, what are they eating, what are they consuming on the platform?”  

“We don’t have it operational yet but this is something that we’re working on.” 

The U.S. government need only use that technology to track the carbon emissions of each citizen and then charge them the SCC which is already in place.