Obama’s “Social Cost Of Carbon” To Be Scrutinized By GAO

At the behest of three Republican legislators, the Government Accountability Office has agreed to look at how the Obama administration came up with its estimate for the amount of damage caused by carbon emissions. It’s necessary to come up with some number for that metric, sometimes referred to as “the social cost of carbon,” in order to formulate regulations in areas like public health, agriculture and the environment. The higher the number, the more stringent the regulations that will be derived from it, and administration regulators have increased their working figure from $21 to $35 a ton.