What you need to know about ‘the social cost of greenhouse gases’—a key climate metric

Putting an accurate figure on the cost of greenhouse gasses can have massive consequences on the future of climate change.

In order to do this, the new White House administration announced late February it will use the Obama-era estimates for the “social cost of greenhouse gasses” after adjusting them for inflation. The social cost of greenhouse gasses was first used by the Bush administration and later standardized by President Barack Obama’s White House.

The Trump administration discontinued the group responsible for updating the metric and used “revised estimates” which, according to the Biden administration, did not “rely on the best available science.”

Michael Greenstone, former…