Appeals court halts ruling blocking Biden climate metric

An appeals court halted a lower court’s ruling that prevented the Biden administration from using a key climate accounting metric in regulations and other decisions.  

The Biden administration uses values known as the “social costs” of planet-warming gases to quantify the climate costs or benefits of the actions that it takes. 

Last year, the administration temporarily reinstated interim estimates based on Obama-era figures, which gave more weight to climate impacts than Trump-era estimates. It also convened an interagency working group to calculate updated estimates. 

In February, Judge James Cain, a Trump appointee, blocked the Biden administration from using the values it had imposed after several Republican-led states challenged it. The red states had argued that they would be harmed if those values resulted in less production of fossil fuels — and less revenue for the states. 

But a panel of 5th Circuit judges late Wednesday halted Cain’s preliminary injunction, saying that the states’ claims are largely hypothetical, coming from potential regulations that may happen rather than actual harm. 

“The Plaintiff States’ claims are based on a generalized grievance of the use of Interim Estimates in cost-benefit analyses of regulations and agency action,” the opinion stated. 

“But their claimed injury does not stem from the Interim Estimates themselves, it stems from any forthcoming, speculative, and unknown regulation that may place increased burdens on them and may result,” the panel added. 

When the Biden administration appealed Cain’s injunction, which blocked it from both using the interim value and blocked the interagency group from working, it argued that Cain’s order hampered a wide range of government activity. 

It had said in court that the ruling held up nearly 40 regulations and nearly 90 environmental reviews that relied on the values to figure out what harm or benefits certain actions would have on the climate. 

Hana Vizcarra, a senior attorney at environmental group Earthjustice, called the Fifth Circuit’s move a “a good strong message that you can’t short circuit the rule of law to score political victories.”

But, Cain will still review the case that the states brought against the Biden administration, and issue a ruling on the merits at a later date. In the meantime, while the case plays out, the administration will be able to proceed with using its climate metric.