On Monday President Obama announced the final "clean power plan" regulation for greenhouse gas emissions from electric generating plants, the centerpiece of the broader Climate Action Plan being implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency. Amid the many assertions about the looming climate crisis confronting "the planet," about which more below, one central parameter was conspicuous by its absence. To wit: What effect on future temperatures---that, after all, is the supposed benefit of the rule---would this regulation provide?
Interestingly enough, the president did not tell us. Nor did the EPA provide an estimate of temperature effects so obviously central to the discussion when it published the rule in draft form in June last year. Amazingly, EPA omits this even from its regulatory impact analysis of the final rule: Table 4-1 ("Climate Effects") informs us that the "global climate impacts" from reduced emissions of carbon dioxide (presumably, all greenhouse gas emissions in CO2 equivalents), of ozone, of particulates, and of other greenhouse gases have not been quantified or monetized. EPA directs interested readers to the administration's deeply flawed analysis of the "social cost of carbon," which does not answer this central question; and to its own "integrated science assessments" and to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, without specific references. (Neither the ISAs nor IPCC answers this basic question either.) EPA does note, however, that it "assess[es] these co-benefits qualitatively because we do not have sufficient confidence in available data or methods." Wow.