Trump Aims to End Carbon Metric That Puts Price on Climate Harms

A price tag on carbon emissions, used across the federal government to write regulations and issue permits, could vanish in less than two months under an executive order President Donald Trump signed.

Eliminating the metric, known as the social cost of carbon, would make it much easier for federal agencies to deregulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars, power plants, and other sources—all priorities for the Trump administration—by changing the value of the actions’ costs and benefits.

It could also help facilities snag environmental permits that would otherwise be hard or impossible to get, skew government decisions about how and where ...