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A new report by the Environmental Defense Fund, the Institute for Policy Integrity, and the National Resource Defense Council shows how far away we are from understanding carbon emissions’ full cost to society. The U.S. government estimates that the social cost of carbon emissions is about $37 a tonne. But the report finds that the “latest scientific and economic research shows that $37 should be viewed as a lower bound” for the cost of carbon. Current models, the report says, miss or poorly account for the damage carbon does to human health, agriculture, oceans, forests, and ecosystems.

The federal government’s revised social cost of carbon figure is too low to adequately capture several social and economic harms posed by climate change, environmental groups said in a report released March 13. The $37 per metric ton figure that federal agencies use to calculate the impact of climate change in their regulations is either missing or improperly quantifying the threats posed by increased risk of high-ozone days, drought, ocean acidification, loss of species and habitat and other impacts, according to the report, “Omitted Damages: What’s Missing From the Social Cost of Carbon,” issued by the Institute for Policy Integrity, the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Obama administration’s controversial social cost of carbon underestimates the economic damage done by carbon dioxide emissions by ignoring some of warming’s effects on health and resource availability, according to a report released today by New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund. The paper seeks to refute industry allies’ charges that the Obama administration inflated costs when it revised the tally sharply upward last year. The estimate released last May put the SCC at $37 per ton of CO2, up from an estimated $24 a ton in 2010. “While some have questioned the increase in the SCC as too high, a thorough examination of the latest scientific and economic research shows that $37 should be viewed as a lower bound,” report author Peter Howard said. “This is because the studies available to estimate the SCC omit many climate impacts — effectively valuing them at zero.”

The Obama administration relied on outdated science that produced a social cost of carbon figure that is too conservative, environmental groups said Feb. 26. “This estimate should be regarded as the lower bound on the true number,” Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, told reporters. The Institute for Policy Integrity, Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council announced Feb. 26 that they had launched a new website, http://costofcarbon.org/, to collect academic research on the social cost of carbon figure. The first report on damages not being accounted for in the federal government’s estimate is expected in March, Revesz said.

Environmentalists and conservatives rushed yesterday to weigh in on the Obama administration’s estimate for the social cost of carbon before the public comment period ended. In a conference call, Institute for Policy Integrity Director Richard Revesz said that the fact OMB offered a public comment period on the SCC demonstrated that the administration had “bent over backward” to give parties on all sides of the issue an opportunity to weigh in. The estimate is not a rule, though it will play a limited role in rulemakings. And OMB does not usually collect public comments on estimates of this kind. “Any claim that there is some kind of transparency deficit here is totally misplaced,” he said.

Climate change impacts – from more extreme droughts and floods to effects like crop losses and sea-level rise – are costing Americans $37 per tonne of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, according to an updated estimate by the U.S. government. The Obama administration’s cost-of-carbon figure has been put to use in a variety of ways, including to justify energy efficiency rules put out by the Department of Energy, said Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law. It is also expected to play into regulations being crafted to govern the building of new power plants in the United States, he said.

Balanced anti-capture review needs to correct for the wide range of effects that outside pressure can have on agency decision making. Limiting review to agency action places an entrenched bias at the heart of OIRA review, sapping normative force from its anti-capture justification. To remedy this problem, we propose a mechanism to review inaction through review of petitions for rulemakings that have been submitted to agencies, but which have been denied or have languished.

The administration has used “the most mainstream, the most well-validated, the most broadly accepted methodology for assigning benefits,” said Michael Livermore, a cost-benefit expert at the University of Virginia law school. He said “the entire process has been on the record.”

To tackle climate change without the help of Congress, the Obama Administration will have to estimate how much it costs society — in damaged crops, wildfires, floods, and a cascading list of other harms — when a ton of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere

Richard Revesz, the director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, oversaw a comprehensive overview of 25 studies of the impact of environmental policy on employment in 2012 that largely indicated no net job losses from tougher regulations.