Trump Order Shifts the Financial Burden of Climate Change Onto Individuals

The social cost of carbon’ is used to gauge the real-world costs climate change is imposing on the U.S. economy.

The measure essentially establishes a price for each ton of carbon emitted, based on the long-term damages it is expected to cause in the future.

It has become the government’s primary tool to weigh the economic costs of climate change against the burden of regulations.

Julian Zelizer : Heritage Foundation wants to ban use of social cost of carbon in policymaking.

He says it would be illegal to measure impact of climate change, but it won't go away; it will likely have the effect of levying costs directly onto citizens.

Zelizer says climate change is already costing the equivalent of about 1.2% U.S. GDP per degree of recent warming.

Trump administration, Heritage Foundation want to discount social cost of carbon to zero .

John Sutter : Uncertainty is a feature, not a bug, in trying to understand the historic change unfolding on the planet.

But it is implausible to argue that there is no cost at all, he says.

Heritage Foundation says there is even a chance that there could be an economic benefit to emitting more carbon.