US Supreme Court preemptively blocks EPA regulations which would mitigate global warming
The Supreme Court ruled against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday, deciding that it did not have the authority to regulate pollution from power plants on a nationwide basis. In a 6-3 decision split along ideological lines, the conservative majority on the court has taken a provocative and reactionary action defending the interests of the fossil fuel industry.
At the center of the ruling is an Obama era policy plan, called the Clean Power Plan, that was drafted in 2015. Under the plan, the EPA would have imposed regulations that restrict carbon emissions from states, primarily caused by power plants, which would have encouraged a transition to renewable energy.
But the Supreme Court blocked that plan in 2016, and it never went into effect. The Trump administration then repealed the plan and imposed its own more lenient policies. That Trump era plan was also blocked by the federal appeals court in Washington D.C, which ruled that the EPA could in fact adopt broad policy plans.
Despite neither the Obama nor Trump emissions plans being in effect, several Republican states and two coal companies preemptively sued the Biden administration, expecting him to introduce a plan similar to Obama’s. But Biden’s emissions plan never came, leaving legal experts to expect the court to overlook the case.
To their surprise, however, the Supreme Court took up the case in West Virginia v. EPA. The resultant ruling is effectively a ban on a policy that does not actually exist, instead attacking future policies and limiting the broader regulatory power of federal agencies.
In his brief on the ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act—initially passed in 1970, years before federal regulators had any serious knowledge of climate change—did not give the EPA the express authority from Congress to regulate statewide emissions. The ruling still allows the environmental agency to regulate individual power plants but severely limits its ability to combat climate change caused by the fossil fuel industry as a whole.
The Clean Air Act calls for the reduction of air pollution through the “best system of emissions reduction,” a vague authority that the EPA has cited as the basis for much of its work. The court’s ruling states that the act is not specific enough, and that the EPA may not operate beyond the bounds of how Congress has explicitly instructed it to act.
The basis of this ruling is formed on the “major questions” doctrine, a judicial principle the Supreme Court granted itself in order to rule on issues of “vast economic and political significance.” In other words, if the court determines an issue to be significant enough, it may utilize an un-enumerated authority to prevent federal agencies from reaching beyond their express written powers granted by Congress.
The significance of this ruling and its legal justification are far reaching. Steve Vladek, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, described the ruling in an interview with CNN as “cataclysmic for modern administrative law.”
He continued by saying: “For a century, the federal government has functioned on the assumption that Congress can broadly delegate regulatory power to executive branch agencies. Today’s ruling opens the door to endless challenges to those delegations—on everything from climate change to food safety standards—on the ground that Congress wasn’t specific enough in giving the agency the power to regulate such ‘major’ issues.”
Such a ruling opens the door for the Supreme Court, as well as lower courts, to block regulations on businesses on the grounds that the responsible agencies were not granted specific authority. And there is concern among legal experts at how ill defined the major questions doctrine is.
“It’s surprisingly unprincipled,” said Jay Duffy, an attorney and power plant emissions expert for the Clean Air Task Force, to CNN. “It’s a can of worms that has been opened and without much guidance as to how important is important. How major is major? I think it could create a lot of problems.”
The Supreme Court has also used this doctrine to block regulations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requiring COVID-19 vaccinations, efforts by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate tobacco sales and to overturn the eviction moratorium imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the early stages of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The court had previously ruled in 2007 in Massachusetts v. EPA that the EPA did have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in general based on the authority of the Clean Air Act. Using the major questions doctrine, the court rejected the EPA’s argument that it did not have express authority because the language of the act is “sweeping” and “capacious” and that the agency was unjustified in its inaction against climate change.
Dissenting from the court’s ruling were three of the current conservative justices: Roberts, Alito and Thomas.
Seeing a chance to undo their previous defeat, the conservative majority of the court decided that they could now drastically change the policy powers of a federal agency, usurping the powers of Congress the court claims to protect.
The political danger of the ruling was captured by Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote that “The subject matter of the regulation here makes the Court’s intervention all the more troubling. Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change. And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions. The Court appoints itself—instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decision-maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.”
This decision, along with its deeply reactionary ruling on abortion rights earlier this month, is a demonstration of the court’s right-wing political character and the fascistic turn of the Republican Party.
The court has effectively granted itself legislative powers, with the aim of stripping the working class of its hard-won democratic rights and undoing regulatory reforms of the past which might even slightly hinder the pursuit of profit.
The ruling on Roe v. Wade and the creation of many regulatory agencies, including the EPA, came at the end of the liberal period that followed the Second World War and the civil rights movement. Such reforms are now being torn apart by the Supreme Court, which is acting as a theocratic cabal in the service of the Republican Party and the most reactionary elements within the ruling class.
After the elimination of the right to abortion, Clarence Thomas, whose wife was directly involved in the January 6 coup attempt, has been explicit in his intention to target other court rulings, including those that guarantee the right to gay marriage and contraception, among others.
The Democratic Party bears responsibility as well. For over five decades they have failed to establish any comprehensive plan to fight climate change and have refused to grant federal regulators the proper authority and resources to do so.
The Supreme Court’s ruling could be undone with the passage of a bill to combat climate change, granting the EPA the express powers that the court demands. But the Democrats have consistently failed to pass any legislation of note. From voting rights to climate change, the Democrats have repeatedly built false promises of reform only to purposely trip at the final hurdle. As the Republicans and the Supreme Court move to attack the rights and protections of the working class, no progressive solution can be found through the feckless politics of the Democratic Party.
In order to fight climate change and defend democratic rights, the working class must take up the fight itself, armed with a social perspective to reorganize society to meet the needs of the vast majority and not the profit interests of a privileged few.
This is Biden's message to the fossil fuel industry: Former energy secretary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW0nxI_o484
The top 25 oil corporations made a combined $205 billion in profits in 2021. Since the beginning of 2022, the five largest oil companies—Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips—have enjoyed a 300 percent increase in profits over the first quarter of 2021. ConocoPhillips, for example, earned profits of $4.3 billion between January and March, an increase of 375 percent over the previous year.
Tilting at Windmills: Biden Meets with Wind Execs While Shunning Oil Industry Leaders
President Joe Biden on Thursday shunned U.S. gas and oil leaders when they met with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, instead issuing an announcement of a partnership between the federal government and states to push for offshore wind infrastructure.
Biden has been slamming the oil and gas industry, blaming them for underproducing and profiteering even as the president, since Day One in office, has done everything possible to hamper domestic production of fossil fuels.
“I didn’t know they’d get their feelings hurt that quickly,” Biden said Tuesday, calling Chevron CEO Mike Wirth and other CEOs “mildly sensitive” for their response to his criticism.
Biden said Sunday he would not meet with the oil industry executives, asserting he has administration officials to take the lead, as Breitbart News reported.
The White House announcement on the wind initiative says, in part:
Today, the White House is joining with eleven governors from up and down the East Coast to launch a new Federal-State Offshore Wind Implementation Partnership that will accelerate the growing offshore wind industry. The partnership will support efforts to provide Americans with cleaner and cheaper energy, create good-paying jobs, and make historic investments in new American energy supply chains, manufacturing, shipbuilding, and servicing.
As a first step of this Partnership, the White House and governors are announcing commitments to collaborate on expanding key elements of the offshore wind supply chain, from manufacturing facilities to port capabilities to workforce development. The Administration is also announcing steps to advance a National Offshore Wind Supply Chain Roadmap and designating offshore wind vessels as Vessels of National Interest to facilitate more offshore wind construction.
The Biden Administration claims that the deal will create thousands of jobs while his energy policies have axed thousands of jobs in the oil and gas industry.
The plan calls on National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, Granholm, Deputy Secretary of Transportation Polly Trottenberg, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Rick Spinrad.
Biden’s plan pledges to offer support to alternative energy, including wind, while working to cut off resources for the fossil fuel industry:
To ensure the development of a robust U.S. offshore wind industry and domestic supply chain, the federal and state governments jointly commit to:
- Work collaboratively to enhance the U.S. domestic manufacturing, logistics, and workforce development network to support the orderly and expeditious development of a robust U.S. offshore wind industry, across both fixed-bottom and floating technologies.
- Work together to most effectively address commonly identified high-priority gaps within the offshore wind manufacturing, logistics, and workforce network, and to facilitate regional solutions including, where possible, the use of public funds to advance these efforts.
- Engage with underserved communities, ocean users, Tribes, local governments, and other stakeholders to ensure that supply chain development provides equitable benefits and minimizes any potential adverse impacts.
- Explore aligning planned offshore wind procurements with offshore wind lease auctions.
- Support the development of a domestic fleet of offshore wind installation and service vessels.
Although the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) touts the growth of alternative energy, including wind power, it also reports its role in the U.S. energy landscape:
The natural variation of wind speeds contributes to very different amounts of wind generation, depending on the time of day or season. Wind first ranked as the second-largest source of U.S. electricity generation for an hour in late March 2021.
On a monthly basis, we have had less wind generation in the United States than natural gas-fired generation, coal-fired generation, or nuclear generation. We do not expect wind to surpass either coal-fired or nuclear generation for any month in 2022 or 2023, based on our most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook forecast.
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White House, Oil Refinery Executives Fail to Reach Plan to Lower Gas Prices
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm emerged from an emergency meeting with major oil refiners on Thursday with no plans to lower gas prices but a vague promise to keep talking, Reuters reported.
The Biden administration’s efforts to lower gas prices are hampered by the Democratic Party’s anti-fossil fuel stance. The far-left climate change activists will not tolerate an expansion of domestic oil production and myriad regulations have helped reduce refinery capacity in the U.S. and kept refiners from opening new plants.
On the campaign trail, President Joe Biden promised he would end fossil fuels. “I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you, I guarantee you we’re going to end fossil fuels,” he said in New Castle, New Hampshire.
“No more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry,” Biden said a year later. “No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period,” Biden said of his energy policies if he won the presidency. “It ends.”
Biden has made good on his promise. On the first day of his presidency, Biden terminated the Keystone XL pipeline project not yet completed. Biden has also driven up private and public financing costs of oil drilling and halted drilling on public lands.
Polling by the Convention of States Action/Trafalgar Group also showed that 53 percent of voters believe Biden is trying to raise the price of gas to force citizens to use less fossil fuel.
Gas prices are currently hovering around $5 per gallon, doubling since former President Trump left office, according to AAA data.
In an effort to reduce the soaring price of gas, the president asked Congress for a 90 day gas tax holiday. Many Democrats are skeptical of that demand, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Investment bank ISI Evercore said Monday the gas tax holiday proposal is an ineffective talking point that shows the White House is out of ideas on inflation and gas prices. “Way back in February, when Democratic Senators first started floating a gas tax holiday, it was immediately clear to us that the idea was a non-starter in Congress and should be viewed primarily as a midterm talking point,” ISI Evercore said.
“This should have been a quick decision by the White House about whether this makes a good message for the midterms,” the organization said. “Taking four months to consider a policy is one thing — taking four months to decide on a talking point is another.”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter and Gettr @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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