Dem. definitely part of it - G.A.O.: Trump Boosts Deregulation by Undervaluing Cost of Climate Change
"February 06, 2020 - Massachusetts Lawmakers Seek GAO Investigation of Trump Administration Decisions on Proposed Energy Projects"
Went for some result of the investigation asked for above. This one dated July 14, 2020, only five months on. May not be, or could be it:
The Government Accountability Office has found that the Trump administration is undervaluing the cost of climate change to boost its deregulatory efforts.
President Trump during a roundtable with energy sector C.E.O.s at the White House in April. Doug Mills/The New York Times
By Lisa Friedman July 14, 2020
3 min read
WASHINGTON — A federal report released on Tuesday found the Trump administration set a rock-bottom price on the damages done by greenhouse gas emissions, enabling the government to justify the costs of repealing or weakening dozens of climate change .. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/biden-climate-plan.html .. regulations.
The report by the Government Accountability Office .. https://www.gao.gov/mobile/products/GAO-20-254 , Congress’s nonpartisan investigative arm, said the Trump administration estimated the harm that global warming will cause future generations to be seven times lower than previous federal estimates. Reducing that metric, known as the “social cost of carbon,” has helped the administration massage cost-benefit analyses, particularly for rules that allow power plants and automobiles to emit more planet-warming carbon dioxide.
[Insert: Inside the Fall of the CDC https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171437785 .. and .. We want them infected’: Trump appointee demanded ‘herd immunity’ strategy, emails reveal Discredited and rejected. Even eventually by the Trump administration. Then-HHS science adviser Paul Alexander called for millions of Americans to be infected as means of fighting Covid-19. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=169972176 .. and .. Good man! Your comment on Trump cutting CDC during his term and overseas too reminded me that these two posts jigsaw into that long very, very long one. While on it it took all my focus and i didn't make the connection before reading yours just now. These two in post headed: P - John Oliver gets it right again. Trump fucked up on three basic facets of virus fighting - preparation, communication and coordination. On the question, Bush and Obama were on the mark. Trump lowered the drawbridge, increasing the probability any deadly airborne virus could hit America hard: [...] How Trump let coronavirus take over America [...]2017-2020: Withdrew CDC staff from China [...]Trump's "drain the swamp" means 'drain the expertise'. Excerpt from yours .. "In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171446036]
“Climate change is a massive threat to our economy. That threat will only grow in years to come, even if we take the action necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, one of eight Democrats who requested the review.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the report.
Every ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere imposes a cost on the economy, whether from damage to infrastructure from sea level rise and heat waves or harm to public health. But calculating the price of that damage has been economically challenging and politically contentious.
Conservatives have argued that the valuation serves to make big energy projects look bad and lays the foundation for burdensome and costly industry regulations. Many Republicans said that the Obama administration’s estimates — which in 2016 determined the social cost of carbon to be about $50 a ton by 2020 — were unrealistic and intentionally onerous.
------- The Biden Administration’s Environmental Agenda
The Trump administration has overhauled not just the regulations governing the economy but also the economic foundations that underpin those regulations. One of President Trump’s earliest moves was to order agencies to unwind Mr. Obama’s climate policies, and with them the social cost of carbon he had set.
When the Trump administration put forward its own rules to regulate emissions from power plants and vehicles, it estimated the cost of climate damages between $1 and $7 per ton of carbon.
The G.A.O. found the administration used two main avenues to push the numbers down. It only factored in damages that would occur within the United States rather than around the globe. It also used an economic calculation, known as the discount rate, in a way that assumes society should not pay much now to prevent harm from climate change to future generations.
[OUCH. Screw your grandchildren's children. Build a fire. Let them suffer.]
“As a result, the current federal estimates, based on domestic climate damages, are about seven times lower than the prior federal estimates that were based on global damages,” the report found.
Michael Greenstone, an economist at the University of Chicago, said the Trump administration’s calculations were not done in good faith.
“It was entirely a political act. I don’t think anyone pretended that those moves were justified,” he said.
Some agencies have defended using the significantly lower figure by saying they are awaiting new federal estimates recommended by the National Academies of Sciences. But the White House disbanded the working group that was devising them and has acknowledged it actually has no plans to update the calculations.
Without them, the G.A.O. found, the federal government “may not be well positioned to ensure agencies’ future regulatory analyses are using the best available science.”
By 2050, under the estimates developed by the Obama administration, the social cost of carbon should be about $82 a ton, the report found. Under the Trump administration’s calculations, the damages would be around $11 a ton.
[color=red][bi]“This really parallels the mismanagement of coronavirus,”[/color] said Michael K. Dorsey, a limited partner with IberSun, a renewable energy company, and a climate expert who has testified before Congress on the social cost of carbon.
“There’s this belief that by doing this you will have some effect of helping the fossil fuel industry,” he said of the administration’s low carbon cost. “The only thing it does, unfortunately, is undermine the ability of the government to make prudent decisions about moving critical resources to communities that are experiencing the unfolding climate crisis.”
Lisa Friedman reports on federal climate and environmental policy from Washington. She has broken multiple stories about the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal climate change regulations and limit the use of science in policymaking. @LFFriedman
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