Reuters: "US is Seriously Underestimating the Consequences of CO2—Study"
This piece details the findings of a new report coauthored by RFF scholars that finds that the social cost of carbon has a central estimate of $185/ton.
The U.S. government is drastically underestimating the social cost of carbon dioxide emissions, which is 3.6 times higher than the estimate currently used to inform many of Washington's key climate policies, a study suggested on Thursday.
Carbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas chiefly responsible for global warming and therefore negatively affects human wellbeing. U.S. economists call this the "social cost" and they calculate it in dollars, considering repercussions such as changes in agricultural productivity, damages from sea level rise and worsening human health.
