US Supreme Court allows Biden administration to continue estimating monetized damages of increasing greenhouse gases News
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US Supreme Court allows Biden administration to continue estimating monetized damages of increasing greenhouse gases

The US Supreme Court in a one-sentence order Thursday denied an application by Louisiana and other Republican-led states to prevent President Joe Biden’s administration from continuing to take account of the “social costs” of increasing greenhouse gas emissions when federal agencies draft new regulations.

The social costs, according to a January 2021 executive order that the 10 states sought to block, are “estimates of the monetized damages associated with incremental increases in greenhouse gas emissions.” The order:

[D]irects all executive departments and agencies […] to immediately review and, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, take action to address the promulgation of Federal regulations and other actions during the last 4 years that conflict with these important national objectives, and to immediately commence work to confront the climate crisis.

The states argued the social costs of greenhouse gases through a regulatory cost/benefit analysis, referring to the Biden administration’s greenhouse gas estimates as “a power grab designed to manipulate America’s entire federal regulatory apparatus through speculative costs and benefits so that the Administration can impose its preferred policy outcomes on every sector of the American economy.”

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar’s response in opposition on behalf of the federal respondents, which asked the Supreme Court to deny vacating the stay by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, stated that the lawsuit was premature and failed to establish its ability to succeed on the merits.

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