Hank Johnson: “This amendment would prohibit an agency from considering the social cost of carbon--social cost of carbon--in an…”

“This amendment would prohibit an agency from considering the social cost of carbon--social cost of carbon--in an agency's environmental review of a proposed construction project. This amendment ignores the fundamental reality that climate change is real and we need to do something about it. The social cost of carbon, or SCC, is an estimate of the social and economic benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions that began under the Bush administration and has been upheld by the courts. For example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to include SCC in its light-truck fuel economy standards in 2007. Thomas Sterner, an economist with the Environmental Defense Fund, cited the Obama administration's SCC estimates as ``a welcome step forward, reflecting the latest versions of the underlying models.'' Billy Pizer, a Duke University economist, notes that the ``key thing is we are recognizing the answer is not zero. We know there are negative consequences.…”