According to economist Frank Ackerman, “it is the most important number you’ve never heard of.” This is precisely the politicization of CO2 environmentalism for which Stern has since been criticized and many of his conclusions discredited.
Between the middle of 2009 and February 2010, hand-picked members the Council of Economic Advisers, the Office of Management and Budget, the Council on Environmental Quality, National Economic Council, Office of Energy and Climate Change, Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Transportation and Treasury — but no outside organizations -- cobbled together, with no public debate, a private "consensus" on how to price carbon in the U.S.
www.miller-mccune.com...
The SCC figure adopted last February is $21per ton of CO2 (about two weeks' use of your car). The value has already been applied to standards for fuel efficiency, and tailpipe emissions. It will be figured into any carbon mitigation strategy, whether cap and trade, cap and dividend or carbon tax.
It has also been applied to new appliance efficiency costs and standards, and is being considered for industrial and power-generation applications as well. The initial rate in the UK was approx. $43/ton; it is now closer to $125. Once imposed, the "creep up" is inevitable.
(Think back to 2009, when OMB was estimating costs of carbon tax -- they "guessed" up to $8,000+/year!)
Have you noticed higher gasolines prices? SCC adds at least $0.20 per gallon!
Has anyone else seen higher electric, heat or food prices?
And, this is when the Feds were warning about deflation. As with everything else about the Obama administration, say one thing, do the opposite!
The catch is that the added costs have been slipped into our regulatory apparatus unannounced and without public debate!
Law professors Jonathan Masur and Eric Posner (Obama's ex-colleaguesfrom the Univ. of Chicago) decry this type of "Feasibility Analysis" as opposed to more open and traditional "cost-benefit analysis."
(Didn't Obama just get raves from the MSM for espousing cost-benefit analysis?)But, he employs a criticized analytic that these legal scholars call "unsuitable for government."
Masur and Posner elaborate:
[w]e stumbled upon the fact that the government is in effect regulating carbon through the SCC.
...
[T]he sensible thing to do would be to have a national discussion on how to price carbon, [but wonder if] the Obama administration deems this discussion politically impossible or politically dangerous. Inherent in the SCC number are moral and diplomatic judgments as well as scientific and economic uncertainties. Therefore, it reflects some very political decisions that are probably best made in a political way by political actors. But these were made very quietly in a room among agency heads and economists.
There was a time for public comment, but it came during discussions about rules for fuel economy and emissions related to the Clean Air Act, and not during a specifically designated climate process.
Ackerman says, "A decision was made through the interagency task force with almost no one knowing that it was happening. There’s no office that claims credit, no website that explains anything about it. This crucial number, which turns out to be the fulcrum for climate policy, was decided in secret by a task force with no names attached to it.”
Seems like regardless of your "faith" in AGW, the Obama administration has already written the basic rules governing the prices we will pay for our lifestyles for the foreseeable future.
They're just not going to tell you that they are doing it.
deny ignorance
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