Cfact By David Wojick |May 25th, 2021
After considerable delay, EPA’s proposed HFC phaseout regulations have been posted for public comment. I earlier looked at the serious technical problems with this proposal, which the various adversely impacted industries will have to comment on. Here I want to talk about the climate change aspect, where the deep problems go way beyond this HFC case.
This is the first major EPA regulation to be based entirely on the fantasy of stopping climate change. It is also a cap and trade system, so there is plenty to be concerned about. What follows is just skimming the surface, but it introduces a number of the nastiest issues.
My focus is the so-called Social Cost of HFCs (SC-HFC, or sometimes just SC). The vast sweep of this concept is breathtaking. Here is how EPA puts it in their Regulatory Impact Analysis:
“SC-HFC includes the value of all climate change impacts, including (but not limited to) changes in net agricultural productivity, human health effects, property damage from increased flood risk and natural disasters, disruption of energy systems, risk of conflict, environmental migration, and the value of ecosystem services.”Wow! That is a lot to figure out, right? Note that they left out the damages from seal level rise, which they also include in SC. Moreover, EPA claims to measure all these various economic impacts for the next 300 years. I am not making this up.
They come up with stupendous numbers. EPA claims that the regulated reduction in HFC production between now and 2050 will avoid almost $300 billion in far future damages. Mind you that is just the discounted present value of the damages. The actual damages, which must be many trillions of dollars, are never given for consideration. Neither is when they will occur.
More:
https://www.cfact.org/2021/05/25/major-february-global-temperature-drop-reveals-the-real-climate-control-knob-5/
