WASHINGTON (AP) — In a blow to the fight against climate change, the Supreme Court on Thursday limited how a key national air pollution law can be used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.
In a 6-3 vote, with a majority of conservatives, the court said the Clean Air Act did not give the Environmental Protection Agency broad powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming.
The ruling, environmentalists and dissenting liberal justices said, was a big step in the wrong direction — a “punch in the gut,” said one prominent meteorologist — at a time of mounting environmental damage from climate change amid dire warnings about the future .
The court’s decision could complicate the administration’s plans to fight climate change. Its detailed proposal for regulating emissions from power plants is expected by the end of the year. Although the decision was specific to the EPA, it was consistent with the conservative majority’s skepticism about the power of regulatory agencies and sent a message about possible future effects beyond climate change and air pollution.
The ruling marks an astonishing sign of the court deadline in which the Conservative majority, backed by three former President Donald Trump’s appointees, also repealed nearly 50 years of nationwide abortion rights, expanded gun rights and issued important religious rights decisions, all liberal dissidents.
President Joe Biden aims to cut the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of the decade and have an emissions-free power sector by 2035. Power plants account for roughly 30 percent of carbon dioxide production.
“Limiting carbon dioxide emissions to a level that will force a national transition away from the use of coal for electricity generation may be a reasonable ‘solution to the crisis of the day,'” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion for the court.
But Roberts wrote that the Clean Air Act does not give the EPA the authority to do that, and that Congress should speak clearly on the matter.
“A decision of this magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself or an agency acting under a clear delegation from that representative body,” he wrote.
In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the ruling strips the EPA of the authority Congress gave it to address “the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.”
Kagan said the stakes in the case were high. She said: “The court is making itself — rather than Congress or an expert agency — the climate policy decision maker. I can’t think of many scarier things.
In a statement, Biden called the decision “another devastating decision designed to set our country back.” He said he “will not back down from using his legal powers to protect public health and tackle the climate crisis”.
EPA chief Michael Regan said his agency will move forward with a rule to enforce environmental standards in the energy sector.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric also chimed in to call the decision “a setback in our fight against climate change when we are already far off track to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement,” the international climate agreement the US has left under Trump administration and re-entered after Biden took office.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrissey, who is leading the legal challenge to the EPA’s authority, said “the EPA can no longer bypass Congress to exercise sweeping regulatory powers that will radically transform the nation’s energy grid and force states to shift fundamentally its energy portfolios from coal-fired generation.”
But University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd, a past president of the American Meteorological Society, said of the decision: “It feels like a gut punch to critical efforts to combat a climate crisis that has the potential to put lives at risk for decades to come.” .”
Richard Reves, an environmental expert at the New York University School of Law, called the decision “a significant setback for environmental protection and public health safeguards.”
But he also said in a statement that the EPA still has the authority to address greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector.
EPA Administrator Regan said the agency “will move forward with legally setting and enforcing environmental standards that meet our obligation to protect all people and all communities from environmental harm.”
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the ramifications of Thursday’s decision “will span the entire federal government, from food and drug regulation to our nation’s health care system, all of which will put American lives at risk.” .
The Court held that Congress must speak specifically when it wants to give an agency the power to regulate a matter of great national importance.
Several conservative justices have criticized what they see as the unchecked power of federal agencies.
Those concerns were evident in court orders striking down two Biden administration policies aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19. Last summer, a 6-3 conservative majority on the court ended a freeze on rent evictions. In January, the same six justices blocked requiring workers at large employers to be vaccinated or tested regularly and to wear a mask on the job.
At the root of all these problems is a lack of action by Congress, reflecting bitter, partisan disagreements over the role of the federal government.
On the environment, Biden’s signature climate action plan, a sweeping social and environmental policy bill known as Build Back Better, is all but dead amid united opposition from congressional Republicans and conservative coal Democrat Senator Joe Manchin. State of West Virginia.
Under an abridged version, the Democratic-backed legislation would offer tax credits and spending to boost renewable energy such as wind and solar power and sharply increase the number of electric vehicles.
The judges heard arguments in the case on the same day that a report by a UN panel warned that the effects of climate change are about to get much worse, likely to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer and more -dangerous in the coming years.
The power plant case has a long and complicated history that begins with the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. That plan would have required states to reduce emissions from power generation, mainly by shifting away from coal-fired plants.
But this plan never came into effect. Acting on a case brought by West Virginia and others, the Supreme Court blocked it in 2016 by a 5-4 vote, with conservatives in the majority.
As the plan was shelved, the legal battle over it continued. But after President Donald Trump took office, the EPA scrapped the Obama-era plan. The agency, under Trump, has argued that its authority to reduce carbon emissions is limited and has developed a new plan that sharply reduced the federal government’s role in the issue.
New York, 21 other predominantly Democratic states, the District of Columbia and some of the nation’s largest cities sued Trump’s plan. A federal appeals court in Washington ruled against both the repeal and the new plan, and its ruling left nothing in place until the new administration comes up with a new policy.
In addition to the unusual nature of the Supreme Court’s involvement, the reductions sought in Obama’s 2030 plan have already been achieved through market-driven shutdowns of hundreds of coal plants.
Nineteen mostly Republican-led states and coal companies fought the Supreme Court battle against the EPA’s broad powers to regulate carbon output.
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Associated Press writers Matthew Daly, Seth Borenstein and Kathy Busewitz in New York contributed to this report.
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