EPA Fires Back at Youth Climate Claims Against Cost Benefit Tool

Youth climate plaintiffs fail to establish how a federal cost-benefit tool used when proposing major rules constitutes a constitutional violation against the lives of children, according to a response brief filed Wednesday by the EPA.

The youth lawsuit centers on the practice of “discounting,” which is used in cost-benefit analyses to place the value of a rule in the present time, versus far out into the future, in order to allow “for economically consistent comparisons of benefits and costs that occur at different points in time,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Youth plaintiffs say the practice underestimates the ...