The Obama administration has instituted new criteria for supporting their climate change regulations. It is called the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC). The eventual cost of an increase in atmospheric CO2 is calculated for each regulation. 
The calculation is based upon their model’s forecasts of temperature, sea level, storms, droughts, etc. All the bad things they believe will happen if the rise of atmospheric CO2 is not stopped. You can be certain that each regulation could prevent millions, perhaps billions, of dollars damage according to their SCC calculation.
The SCC calculations use several discount rates that most rational economist would say were not germane. SSC presumes that the next generations will not have more knowledge and money to adapt to what ever actually happens. For example at the turn of the last century, do you think the forecasters would have come up with airplanes, nuclear energy, penicillin, satellites, for several example of things that have made enormous changes? And the many people that would be lifted out of poverty and provided a much-improved life?
Climate Change Sanity 