Report: EPA quadruples its carbon 'social cost' claim

(Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash)
(Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash)

Back in Barack Obama’s day, “green” agenda activists determined that the “social cost” of a ton of carbon emissions was $51.

Now, just a few years later, the Environmental Protection Agency insists that’s $190.

”The figure isn’t just hypothetical. If enacted, it could affect everything from the cost of methane regulations and tailpipe emissions to the ‘climate reparations’ that President Joe Biden has committed the United States to paying to poor countries in the future,” explains a report from Just the News.

The publication says the EPA’s maneuver to redefine the cost is creating “future impact for Americans’ wallets and a new headache for the oil and gas industries.”

The trick of simply redefining something that’s already in the law has been used by Joe Biden before. He insists that “sex” in federal law means “gender identity,” so that a long list of federal protections against discrimination based on being a man or woman also applies to those men who say they are women, for example.

The report said the EPA proposed changing the impact number just weeks ago.

The “social cost” term was created in 2009 under Obama, and in a rulemaking notice, the EPA “said it had devised a new calculation that raises that damage estimate to $190 per metric ton by 2022 standards and as much as $410 by the year 2080.

Just the News said the EPA’s maneuver “has sent shockwaves through the energy industry and raised the stakes for ongoing litigation being brought by Republican attorneys general in states like Louisiana that are challenging the Biden administration Social Cost of Carbon rulemaking as unconstitutional.”

The change would hit consumers hard, increasing the prices of everything from dinner on the table to fuel to run a furnace.

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“If you think about the fact that they would impose this damage factor, let’s say on farmers, because it applies to fertilizer,” Louisiana Solicitor General Liz Muiller told the John Solomon Reports podcast.

”Fertilizer emits nitrous oxide. So fertilizer is a big contributor. If every family farmer now is going to have to pay more to obtain fertilizer to fertilize crops that feed us, well, what’s that going to do to the price of food? If you’re industrial, if you use plastic products in anything that’s touched by petroleum, it’s going to increase the cost of producing those goods.”

Muiller said there’s evidence the numbers already are being used in the government’s regulatory processes, and the next event in a lawsuit is arguments next week before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Obama’s original plan has been opposed by the energy industry and many states, but green groups like the Sierra Club claim it’s the only way the U.S. will “get a grip” on “our greenhouse gas problem.”

The report said eventually, the number, moving forward, will be used to raise costs on power plants, automobiles and all energy drilling, which will be passed on to consumers.

Tim Stewart, the president of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told Just the News that if the “price” is set at $340, which the EPA also has evaluated, there would be a $2.99 per gallon tax penalty on every gallon of gasoline pumped.

Based on fuel prices that already have been seen because of Joe Biden’s economic policies that have let inflation surge, that could take the cost of a gallon of gasoline into the $10 range.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Leftwing billionaire George Soros bankrolls everything evil – most recently the 75 pro-criminal “Soros district attorneys” who have transformed America’s most dynamic cities into degraded, crime-infested hellscapes of skyrocketing violent crime. Soros also funds drug legalization, euthanasia, open borders, globalism, Black Lives Matter, “defunding the police,” devaluing America’s currency and destroying her sovereignty. But why?

Whistleblower magazine reveals and explores the stunning truth: Soros, an atheist, literally says he’s “some kind of god,” obsessed with re-creating the world in his image. Here are a few actual quotes from Soros: “If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood…” “It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” “You know, in my personal capacity I’m not actually a selfless philanthropic person. I’ve very much self-centered.” “I am kind of a nut who wants to have an impact.” “Next to my fantasies about being God, I also have very strong fantasies of being mad. … I have a lot of madness in my family. So far I have escaped it.”

Except he hasn’t “escaped it.” Not only is Soros totally mad, but he’s imposing his insanity on America. See Soros and the leftwing world he has created and funded as never before in “THE BILLIONAIRE WHO THINKS HE’S ‘GOD’: Why George Soros is obsessed with destroying America.”

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This article was originally published by the WND News Center.

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