(Reuters) – A federal judge on Friday blocked for now the Biden administration from restoring Obama-era values for calculating the cost of climate change in the government’s permitting, investment and regulatory decisions.
The preliminary ruling by a U.S. District Court judge in Louisiana is a blow to President Joe Biden’s efforts to factor the risks of climate change into federal decision-making.
The “social cost of greenhouse gases” estimate is used in rule-making processes and permitting decisions to estimate economic damages associated with a rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Those could include things like impacts to agricultural productivity or property damage from increased flood risk.
The decision reverts the government’s social cost of greenhouse gases emitted to the $10 or less per ton imposed by the Trump administration, from about $50 per ton.
In his order, Judge James Cain said Biden lacked the authority to make such a substantial change through executive order and violated federal law by imposing new rules without seeking public comment.
“The President lacks power to promulgate fundamentally transformative legislative rules in areas of vast political, social, and economic importance,” Cain wrote.
The White House had raised the value shortly after Biden took office last year, but a group of Republican states sued, saying the administration broke the law by changing the value without giving the public an opportunity to weigh in. The states argued that the higher cost would stall development and cost jobs in their states.
Cain, in justifying his preliminary injunction, found that the suing states had shown that the change would harm their “ability to purchase affordable energy,” and specifically said Louisiana would have fewer funds to maintain its coastline.
(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by Leslie Adler)
