A fire burns at a fossil fuel extraction site in Texas in 2021. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a new way to evaluate the cost to humanity of emitting greenhouse gases.A fire burns at a fossil fuel extraction site in Texas in 2021. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a new way to evaluate the cost to humanity of emitting greenhouse gases.The most powerful climate policy tool available to the federal government is a single number.
But the EPA didn't assign the same dollar value to every life. Instead, a life lost in a lower-income country due to climate change is worth less than a life lost in a higher-income country. Chaturvedi argues that the EPA's approach is both philosophically and logically wrong, because America's greenhouse gas emissions endanger people everywhere. In fact, the people who live in low-lying and low-income countries are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including rising seas and extreme weather.last year, according to the Indian Meteorological Department.
Daniel Hemel, a law professor who studies how policymakers assign value to lives saved for the purpose of regulations, says the EPA's social cost of carbon does put a dollar amount on human lives."You'll hear agencies say 'We're not valuing lives.' I don't know, they kind of are. They're deciding how much it's worth it to spend to save a life," he says.
It's unclear why EPA economists didn't choose this route. Hemel speculates that some policymakers might be concerned about proposing a social cost of carbon that is so high, it appears to require the U.S. to take drastic, and politically unpopular, steps to slash greenhouse gas emissions. For example, banning gas-powered vehicles or eliminating domestic fossil fuel extraction.
Ethnocentrism
Well, what does a human produce in each of those situations? Is Elon Musk worth the same as the homeless dude? Or the pedo?
NPR sucks.