(The Guardian) Supreme Court limits federal power to regulate carbon emissions
The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply curbed the federal government’s authority to limit carbon emissions from existing power plants, dealing a major blow to the administration’s climate goals.
In a 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative supermajority sided with conservative states and fossil fuel companies in a move that will hobble efforts to move the US away from coal-burning power plants and toward sources of renewable energy.
The decision will have “profound implications for the government’s overall regulatory power” and will “seriously hinder America’s ability to stave off disastrous global heating,” writes Oliver Milman, the Guardian’s environment reporter. Here’s more from Oliver: The case, which was backed by a host of other Republican-led states including Texas and Kentucky, was highly unusual in that it was based upon the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era strategy to cut emissions from coal-fired power plants that never came into effect. The Biden administration sought to have the case dismissed as baseless given the plan was dropped and has not been resurrected.
Not only was this case about a regulation that does not exist, that never took effect, and which would have imposed obligations on the energy sector that it would have met regardless. It also involves two legal doctrines that are not mentioned in the constitution, and that most scholars agree have no basis in any federal statute.
However, the supreme court has sided with West Virginia, a major coal mining state, which argued that “unelected bureaucrats” at the EPA should not be allowed to reshape its economy by limiting pollution – even though emissions from coal are helping cause worsening flooding, heatwaves and droughts around the world, as well as killing millions of people through toxic air.
It is the most important climate change case to come before the supreme court in more than a decade.
-Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...tricts-federal-power-greenhouse-gas-emissions
The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply curbed the federal government’s authority to limit carbon emissions from existing power plants, dealing a major blow to the administration’s climate goals.
In a 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative supermajority sided with conservative states and fossil fuel companies in a move that will hobble efforts to move the US away from coal-burning power plants and toward sources of renewable energy.
The decision will have “profound implications for the government’s overall regulatory power” and will “seriously hinder America’s ability to stave off disastrous global heating,” writes Oliver Milman, the Guardian’s environment reporter. Here’s more from Oliver: The case, which was backed by a host of other Republican-led states including Texas and Kentucky, was highly unusual in that it was based upon the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era strategy to cut emissions from coal-fired power plants that never came into effect. The Biden administration sought to have the case dismissed as baseless given the plan was dropped and has not been resurrected.
Not only was this case about a regulation that does not exist, that never took effect, and which would have imposed obligations on the energy sector that it would have met regardless. It also involves two legal doctrines that are not mentioned in the constitution, and that most scholars agree have no basis in any federal statute.
However, the supreme court has sided with West Virginia, a major coal mining state, which argued that “unelected bureaucrats” at the EPA should not be allowed to reshape its economy by limiting pollution – even though emissions from coal are helping cause worsening flooding, heatwaves and droughts around the world, as well as killing millions of people through toxic air.
It is the most important climate change case to come before the supreme court in more than a decade.
-Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...tricts-federal-power-greenhouse-gas-emissions
