Mark Dice isn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. I'd like to see people ask him questions. "Mark Dice is an American author and conspiracy theorist based in San Diego, California, who argues that the New World Order secret societies, such as the Illuminati, Bilderberg Group, Skull and Bones and Bohemian Grove, direct human affairs and global politics, particularly those of the United States....In June 2008, Dice launched a campaign urging people to send letters and DVDs to troops stationed in Iraq, which supported the theory that the 9/11 attacks were an 'inside job'." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Dice

Note: the $300 billion figure comes from the point where the NERA report claims that "energy sector expenditures" will increase by $300 billion, which is obviously not a welfare effect because it (a) ignores offsetting changes in other sectors and (b) counts transfer payments as costs. For welfare, NERA cites as $64-$79 billion change in "losses to U.S. consumers". This is closer to a welfare measure, but omits environmental benefits as well as effects on non-US consumers, and is therefore still an overstatement of costs.

On the contrary, NERA's analysis seems to suggest that the CPP passes any reasonable cost benefit analysis (CBA). In particular, NERA finds NPV costs of $64 to $79 billion for the period 2022-2033 (see page 5 of http://www.americaspower.org/sites/default/files/NERA%20CPP%20Final%20Nov%207.pdf), while finding that annual average emissions will fall by at least 425 million tons per year in that time frame. Let us take the upper estimate of cots ($79b) and lower estimate of emissions impact (425 million tons). Let us further suppose all of those emission reductions occur at the end of the window, in 2033 so that so that the benefits are discounted as much as possible. Then 2033 emissions fall by 12*425=5100 million tons. Then for a social cost of carbon of x per ton (in 2016 dollars), the NPV of benefits is x*(5.1 billion tons)/((1.05^17 )). The 17 is because 2033 is 17 years beyond the 2016 NPV year in NERA's analysis and the 1.05 is because NERA assumes a 5% discount rate (sources: footnotes on page 6 of NERA). What level of the SCC would justify the policy using the high-end costs ($79b) and low-end benefits (5.1 b tons in 17 years)? NPV(Costs) < NPV(Benefits) $79b < x*5.1b/(1.05^17) Or x > ($79b/5.1b)*1.05^15 = $35.5. This upper-bound is still below the majority of estimates of the SCC (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/january/emissions-social-costs-011215.html). Thus, NERA's analysis suggests that in the worse-cast scenario the CPP nonetheless passes a cost-benefit analysis.