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Move the prices, watch the grid

A carbon price and a mortality price pull the cheapest grid in different directions. Drag both and see it happen — instantly, off a grid of runs pre-computed for Midwest. Coal exits under either price; the gas share is where they disagree.

$0/ton
$14.1M/death
Final-year generation mix (MIDW, year 25)
Solar 119 TWhWind 397 TWhNuclear 161.6 TWhGas 43 TWhCoal 0.5 TWhBattery 0 TWh
Deaths, final year
147
up to 528
Deaths vs no pricing
−2,086
avoided / yr
CO₂, final year
34
MT
CO₂ vs no pricing
−85 MT
avoided / yr
What the reduction costs (vs no pricing, whole horizon)
Per ton CO₂ avoided
$260/ton
Per death avoided
$8.9M

You priced a death at $14.1M. The grid avoided them at an implied $8.9M each — less than your price, so the reduction cost less than you said a life is worth.

Each figure attributes the full extra system cost to that one axis, so read them one slider at a time: the per-ton number is cleanest with only the carbon price on, the per-death number with only the mortality price on.

A pre-computed grid for MIDW over 25 years — the sliders snap to grid points. Watch where coal leaves under either price, and where the gas share diverges: a mortality price keeps more gas than a carbon price of comparable bite.

The band is scientific uncertainty, not rounding. Each source's death rate is a central estimate with a much higher upper bound — coal's depends on how air-pollution exposure is modeled; hydro's high bound includes the 1975 Banqiao dam failure, its central figure excludes it. Reported deaths carry those ranges across the mix, so a mortality figure is a band skewed upward, never a single number. Pricing a death adds a second range (the VSL is itself low/central/high), so any priced-mortality cost inherits both.

Assigning a dollar value to a death is a moral choice you are making, not a technical parameter the model resolves. The VSL figures are HHS's published range, shown as published values — never as endorsement.

This is a coarse demo grid for one region. To run any region at full resolution with your own knobs, use a custom run, or read how the two prices work on the Safety & mortality page.