Bummer: SCOTUS Decisions Are Already Slowing Climate Action

I wonder if Warmists ever considered that they can change their own behavior on their own? That there is no need for authoritarian government to force everyone to comply with the cult?

Recent Supreme Court decisions are already slowing climate progress

During its last session, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority dealt blow after blow to federal agencies’ authority to draft and enforce policies, including those aimed at mitigating climate change. Its decisions have already created upheaval for courts considering issues ranging from the approval of a solar project to vehicle emissions rules. This has upended the legal landscape for judges and for regulators, and could slow climate progress as a result.

The uncertainty has alarmed, but not surprised, legal experts who earlier this summer predicted that four rulings limiting federal authority could curtail the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies to limit pollution, govern toxic substances, and mitigate global warming.

“It’s going to throw climate policy into many years of litigating what these cases actually mean when applied to individual rulemakings,” said Deborah Sivas, an environmental law professor at Stanford University. “That’s not good for the energy transition that we actually need to go through.”

Yeah, it is a real shame that unelected bureaucrats can no longer bypass the express intentions of the US Constitution, where it is incumbent on the duly elected Legislative branch to pass laws which the Executive carries out

Sending cases back to lower courts for further review will almost certainly delay decisions, limiting the effectiveness of federal policies to address climate change and other issues. But an even greater impact may be felt by the agencies charged with taking those actions and already facing increasing scrutiny and lawsuits.

“Agencies will have to be even more careful than they already are to ground proposed regulations in the text of the statute and to explain why they believe that the regulation is consistent with Congressional intent,” Rylander said.

So they cannot just simply do whatever they want willy nilly, they actually have to follow the Constitution? Huh. Shame.

Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry and other polluters, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s recent decisions, have ramped up challenges to environmental regulations. In late July, Republican state attorneys general, rural electric cooperatives, and fossil fuel trade organizations asked the Supreme Court to pause an EPA rule to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of coal- and gas-fired power plants. As in Ohio v. EPA, the plaintiffs are once again asking the high court to block the rule even as it wends through the D.C. Circuit. (The Supreme Court previously paused another EPA power plant emissions rule in 2016, the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which never went into effect.) Legal experts say the outcome of Ohio v. EPA proves the Supreme Court is willing to take such far-reaching actions — and that it has clearly encouraged this request for an emergency pause.

“Industry lawyers believe it is open season to go after regulations,” Michael Gerrard, an environmental law professor at Columbia University, said. Corporate clients, egged on by Ohio v. EPA and other Supreme Court wins, have concluded that “the expense of the lawsuit is small compared to the benefit if they win,” he said.

Get laws passed. That’s the way it works.

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