US Supreme Court Curbs Government’s Greenhouse Gas Rules
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – The U.S. Supreme Court has curbed the government’s power to limit greenhouse gas emissions in a boost for the traditional energy industry.
The court’s 6-3 ruling restricted the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate emissions from existing coal- and natural gas-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act anti-pollution law.
It comes as a setback for U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate plans which have come under pressure for closing Trump-era projects amid mounting natural gas and oil prices.
Thursday’s ruling means the Biden administration will need legislation and the backing of the U.S. Congress if it wants to introduce regulations to reduce emissions.
The opinion from the majority-conservative court said that “a decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself.”
The justices said they doubted Congress intended to delegate the question of “how much coal-based generation” there should be “to any administrative agency.”
Biden, who was elected president on a platform of “fighting climate change,” vowed to remove carbon from the US power grid by the middle of the next decade. He wanted to move the nation toward net-zero emissions, but his attempts to push new legislation through Congress have stalled.
BIDEN REACTS
A disappointed Biden said after the ruling that he would “not relent” in using his authorities to tackle what he views as a climate crisis. “I have directed my legal team to work with the Department of Justice and affected agencies to review this decision carefully. And find ways that we can, under federal law, continue protecting Americans from harmful pollution, including pollution that causes climate change,” he said in a statement.
A debate continues among experts about “human-caused climate change,” with many but not all scientists agreeing on the issue. Critical parents and commentators have expressed concern about what they view as climate indoctrination of children.
“Shortly after the first [environmental action] Earth Day in 1970, radical environmentalists began making bold and nonsensical predictions about just how long our planet would survive,” recalled Kaylee McGhee White, the deputy editor of the ‘Restoring America’ project for the respected Washington Examiner publication.
White, who is also a visiting fellow at the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, cited Harvard biologist George Wald who
estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
The New York Times paper editorial board warned at the time ‘that unless we put an end to pollution and started conserving resources, humanity as we knew it would face “possible extinction’ White added.
“Denis Hayes, one of the scientists behind the creation of Earth Day, declared that ‘it is already too late to avoid [a] mass starvation’ that would kill millions of people globally within the next several decades.”
Yet, 52 years later, “it’s safe to say that all of these doomsday predictions were wrong — as was the panic that environmentalists stirred up among the public. And yet, it’s still very much present in our education system,” White complained.