Minnesota aims to predict ‘social costs’ of energy 300 years from now

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Watchdog.org:

The Minnesota Department of Commerce and Pollution Control Agency failed last year on the goal of establishing climate-change damages for carbon dioxide and three related greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Now, state officials and environmentalists want Minnesota to adopt the controversial Interagency Working Group statistical model used by the Environmental Protection Agency to estimate so-called climate change damages per metric ton of emissions — through the year 2300.

 

That statistical tool merges global climate and economic models to try to approximate the impact of CO2 emissions on quality of life.

 

Green groups pressed the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission into agreeing last December to put a price on the broader economic, environmental and health impact on Minnesotans of turning on their lights.

 

“You capture the negative impact to the environment, human health, the economy and broader (impacts), and the bad players are going to have to either reduce or mitigate or adjust to play within the boundaries you create,” said Eric Jensen, energy program director for the Izaak Walton League of America, Midwest Office.