The Biden administration has paused the sale of oil and gas leases on public lands after a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the government from considering the cost of future damage from the climate crisis in its decision-making. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge James Cain — a Trump appointee — barred federal agencies from using a higher value of the “social cost of carbon” — a metric that assigns a dollar value to each ton of greenhouse gases emitted. The Justice Department has promised to appeal the ruling, which is preventing at least four different agencies from finalizing at least 38 pending environmental rules.