To embed, copy and paste the code into your website or blog: The social cost of carbon (SCC) has a checkered regulatory history spanning nearly 40 years, but it now has been thrust back onto the federal stage, front and center. Among President Joe Biden's first acts in office was a directive to publish interim social costs for carbon, nitrous oxide and methane within 30 days of his executive order, "Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis." along with the final social costs by January 2022. The executive order reassembles the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases (Working Group) – the regulatory apparatus first established by the Obama Administration in 2009 for the purpose of standardizing a valuation of the monetized damages associated with incremental increases in greenhouse gas emissions. A single methodology for determining the dollar figure for the SCC enables federal agencies to fulfill part of their obligations under President Ronald Reagan's Executive Order 12291 of 1981 by incorporating that amount in the cost-benefit analyses of their intended regulations.