Supreme Court rejects red states’ plea to block Biden climate metric – By Alex Guillen (Politico) / May 26, 2022
The decision means the White House can move forward with its plans to overhaul and likely significantly increase the number known as the social cost of carbon.
The Supreme Court will not torpedo the Biden administration’s estimate of the social impacts of climate change, rejecting on Thursday a request from Louisiana and other Republican-controlled states to block agencies from using the metric in rulemakings and other decisions.
The decision means the White House can move forward with its plans to overhaul and likely significantly increase the number known as the social cost of carbon — a dollar value assigned to future damages from climate change. The current value is $51 for each ton of greenhouse gases spewed into the atmosphere, but experts believe it should be raised to as much as four times that amount.
Background: In response to a legal challenge led by Louisiana, Judge James Cain of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana — a Trump appointee — in February issued an injunction against any use of the social cost of carbon, which had been previously deployed by the Obama and Trump administrations. That decision threw a wrench into rulemakings, environmental reviews, lease sales and grant disbursements, the Biden administration warned.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in March stayed Cain’s injunction, ruling that Louisiana and the other states lacked standing to challenge the metric directly, but needed to challenge it as applied to a specific rulemaking.
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