In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, Professors Michael Greenstone and Cass R. Sunstein warn that reduced environmental regulations, including “ending the use of the social cost of carbon in federal rule makings,” by the Trump administration, would “reflect a neglect of science and economics.”

In 2009, Greenstone and Sustein convened the first meetings of the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon, which aimed to quantify the “social cost” of carbon emissions for the U.S. government — the monetary losses faced across agriculture, labor productivity, property destruction, mortality rates, and more for each ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.