Climate Policy in the Age of Trump

The Trump administration is in the process of undoing what were the two central planks of President Obama’s climate policy: First, Trump has called for a review of how the social cost of carbon is calculated in used in analyses of regulatory rule making and, second, Trump has announced that the United States is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. In this paper I examine some of the conservative critics’ objections to the first plank: calculations of the social cost of carbon in climate cost benefit analyses. I argue that while some of these criticisms are justified, the criticisms end up strengthening arguments for the importance of the second plank: the urgent need for an ambitious climate policy, in accord with the Paris Agreement, as precaution against exposing others to the risk of catastrophic harms.