WEST VIRGINIA v. EPA: The Supreme Court’s climate decision, explained (Washington Post $), The climate math just got harder (New York Times $), The ruling’s implications may extend beyond the climate fight (New York Times $), The Supreme Court’s big EPA decision is a massive power grab by the justices (Vox), Court decision leaves Biden with few tools to combat climate change (New York Times $), The Supreme Court’s fleeting gift to the coal industry (Vox), The case tests the sweep of the ‘major questions doctrine’ (New York Times $), Why today felt like the most hopeless day of the SCOTUS term (Slate)
- RULING COVERAGE: Supreme Court limits EPA in curbing power plant emissions (AP, E&E News, CNN, Bloomberg $, CNN, Prism Reports, Politico Pro $, OilPrice, CNBC, Washington Post $, The Hill, Utility Dive, Indian Country Today, New York Times $, Protocol), Supreme Court’s EPA ruling upends Biden’s environmental agenda (Washington Post $, The Verge, Reuters, FT $, The Guardian), The Supreme Court’s EPA decision could have been much, much worse (Grist), What you need to know about the Supreme Court’s EPA case (Washington Post $)
- FUTURE IMPLICATIONS & ADD'L COVERAGE: Supreme Court climate ruling may chill regulation (E&E News), 'We don’t have to pretend anymore: Greens ready to bail on D.C. (Politico), ‘We have to be creative.' How the Biden administration is responding to the SCOTUS climate setback (TIME), West Virginia AG calls Supreme Court EPA ruling a ‘huge victory’ (The Hill), After Supreme Court ruling, can EPA still tackle climate change? (Christian Science Monitor), Back to the drawing board: US Supreme Court upends Biden climate agenda (Reuters), Does Supreme Court decision doom power plant rulemakings? (Yale Climate Connections), EPA isn’t ‘knocked out,’ but doing its job just got much harder (Bloomberg $), The Supreme Court’s EPA ruling isn’t the only legal attack on the environment (Vox), What Big Tech can do following SCOTUS’ big climate ruling (Protocol), What is the Clean Air Act? (New York Times $), What the SCOTUS climate ruling means for cities (Bloomberg $)
(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: A ‘classic example’ of racism: Environmental justice pioneer slams proposed landfill in Houston (Houston Chronicle), A doctor explains ways the overturning of Roe v. Wade impacts Black women the most (Blavity), Neighborhoods wrecked by racist freeway construction could get a boost from new Biden fund (Gizmodo), Flint residents outraged as charges dropped in deadly water scandal that poisoned majority-Black city (Democracy Now)
FOSSIL FUELED WAR: Putin steps up natural gas restrictions for Europe. Where prices could go from here. (Barron's)
FREEPORT LNG: U.S. regulator bars Freeport LNG plant restart over safety concerns (Reuters), PHMSA examines ‘overpressure situation’ at Freeport LNG, possibly delaying restart (Natural Gas Intel), US regulator bars restart of Freeport LNG plant amid unsafe conditions (Reuters), US natgas plunge 17% as Freeport LNG outage leaves more fuel for storage (Reuters)
(CLIMATE) DIPLOMACY: ‘Defining challenge’: NATO names climate as major threat (E&E News), Missing from Biden’s Europe trip: An endgame for war and cheaper gas (New York Times $)
CLIMATE LITIGATION: Climate litigants look beyond Big Oil for their day in court (Bloomberg $), European court bumps youths’ climate case to top-tier panel (AP)
GREENWASHING & DENIAL: How the gas industry aims to rebrand as ‘clean’ energy to appeal to Black and Latino voters (The Guardian)
IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT: Climate change hopelessness is a real condition—these experts have advice on how to cope (CNBC)
PUT THE FUN BETWEEN YOUR LEGS: A bicycle built for transporting cargo takes off (New York Times $)
SCOTUS: Ketanji Brown Jackson sworn in as first Black woman on the Supreme Court (NPR), George Washington University will retain Clarence Thomas as a professor amid protest (CNN, The Grio)
EPA: EPA proposes limits on weedkiller to protect water (E&E $)
DOE: Jigar Shah on the DOE's role in accelerating the energy transition (Bloomberg Odd Lots podcast $), DOE: Major LNG project ‘would not increase’ CO2 (E&E News), DOE announces more than $600M to modernize hydro (E&E $)
DOI: Biden administration drilling plan may exclude all waters beyond Gulf of Mexico (Reuters)
EXECUTIVE BRANCH: ‘Severe impact': War game tests military's climate readiness (E&E $)
WHITE HOUSE: Biden will not directly ask Saudis to increase oil production during visit (Politico), Biden says he supports changing Senate filibuster rules to protect abortion rights (The 19th* News, AP), White House spotlights health care industry carbon pledges (E&E $)
HOUSE: Kinzinger warns of “Christian Taliban” after Boebert’s comments (Black Wall Street Times), Pallone joins call for oil export ban (E&E $)
ELECTIONS: Group drops $1.7M to bolster at-risk Dems on gas prices (E&E News), How Pruitt flamed out in his Okla. Senate race (E&E News)
CITIES AND STATES: New York has denied a permit to a controversial crypto mining plant (Protocol, NBC), Rhode Island governor signs ‘most aggressive renewable energy standard’ in US, targets 100% offsets by 2033 (Utility Dive)
- CALIFORNIA: Calif. may rely on carbon capture to meet 2045 net-zero goal (E&E $), California dairy uses lots of water. Here’s why it matters. (Civil Eats), California passes polarizing energy bill that could help rescue gas plants (LA Times $), Nation’s most sweeping law to phase out single-use plastics approved by California lawmakers (LA Times $)
FERC: Appeals court upholds FERC approval of Southgate pipeline project but legal hurdles remain (Utility Dive), Power supply groups urge FERC to reform Western offer cap to avoid market uncertainty (Utility Dive)
IMPACTS: Deadly typhoon spurs effort to study extreme rainfall (E&E $), Nicaragua reinforces prevention measures due to climate threat (Prensa Latina), Snowy Alps will be a distant memory unless we act fast (The Guardian), Will sandstorms force the [Persian] Gulf to address climate change? (Energy Monitor)
HEAT: Los Angeles to launch ‘extreme heat campaign’ Friday, says city’s first heat officer (LA Times $)
DROUGHT: Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric (LA Times $), ‘Our only livelihood’: Zimbabwean fishing communities fear for future as stocks dwindle (The Guardian)
RENEWABLES: Green energy jobs are on the rise as fossil fuel companies lose workers (Grist), Renewable power costs rise, just not as much as fossil fuels (Bloomberg $), First solar rejects US site for new factory, eyes Europe or India instead (Bloomberg $), New Mexico land deal paves way for largest US wind project (E&E $), Four charts reveal seismic shifts in global energy within one lifetime (Bloomberg $), US to add 6 GW offshore wind capacity through 2029 -EIA (Reuters), Yes, there are benefits of growing broccoli beneath solar panels (Inside Climate News)
OIL & GAS: In San Juan Basin, cultural, economic bonds slow fossil fuel transition (Energy News Network), Mercedes may sell gas back to grid to help with supply crunch (Bloomberg $), OPEC reaffirms slightly higher oil output (Washington Post $)
HYDROGEN: US green hydrogen hub will put long-haul energy storage to the test (Canary Media)
UTILITIES: New Jersey authorizes PSE&G to spend $511M on 4-year grid modernization program (Utility Dive)
EVs: British EV startup Tevva launches hydrogen booster truck model (Reuters)
BOOZE: Beer made from recycled toilet water wins admirers in Singapore (Bloomberg $)
ART: ‘So many changes': Global art project takes aim at climate (E&E $)
AGRICULTURE: The farmers restoring Hawaii’s ancient food forests that once fed an island (Grist)
CARBON PRICING: World’s biggest ever carbon credits issue planned in Gabon (Bloomberg $)
CARS: Ferrari to churn out gas guzzlers on its slow road to electric (Reuters)
INTERNATIONAL: Australia swiftly needs $9 billion in grid investment for energy transition (Reuters), Burning ban failing to protect England’s peatlands, say conservation groups (The Guardian), Chinese oil giant sets carbon deadlines (E&E $), Crabbers face danger and poverty to save Ecuador's mangroves (Thomson Reuters Foundation), Former Australian chief scientist to head review of carbon credit scheme after whistleblower revelations (The Guardian), Fossil fuels surpass renewables as EU's top power source - Eurostat (Reuters)
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SCOTUS Gives Polluters An Early Independence Day Gift: Freedom To Keep Polluting
Welp. It happened.
Yesterday the Supreme Court didn't totally eviscerate the EPA's authority to act on carbon pollution, but it came pretty close, issuing an opinion in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency that severely curtailed the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector, based on the current language of the Clean Air Act.
The Court’s conservative supermajority formalized the "major questions doctrine," some legal flim-flammery that essentially grants the Court a massive new authority over the Executive branch, all disguised in the name of bestowing that power "back" to the Legislative branch. This polluter-packed conservative SCOTUS just invited industry to sue over every regulation that it doesn't like. (All of them.)
There are plenty of good reads already, with our favorites being Emily Sanders bringing the receipts to show that in this ruling, "Big Oil Gets What It Paid For," and Molly Taft's piece headlined "The Supreme Court Just Fucked the Planet".
While Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan wasn't quite as bold in the dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Breyer and Sotomayor, she makes clear this ruling is a legal farce and based on a claim about EPA expertise that "is wrong." She writes "[t]his is not the Attorney General regulating medical care, or even the CDC regulating landlord-tenant relations. It is EPA (that’s the Environmental Protection Agency, in case the majority forgot) acting to address the greatest environmental challenge of our time."
"In case the majority forgot" is the type of grade-A snark found throughout the dissent, but let's back up. The first sentence of Kagan's dissenting opinion reads: "Today, the Court strips the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the power Congress gave it to respond to 'the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.'"
Kagan cites the science and warns, "[i]f the current rate of emissions continues, children born this year could live to see parts of the Eastern seaboard swallowed by the ocean." Which is true, but also an understatement, because parts of the Eastern seaboard have already been swallowed by the ocean.
She then discusses how the Clean Air Act should absolutely apply and justify EPA action on climate, but "this Court has obstructed EPA’s effort from the beginning. Right after the Obama administration issued the Clean Power Plan, the Court stayed its implementation. That action was unprecedented: Never before had the Court stayed a regulation then under review in the lower courts."
It was extreme action from the Court, for a decidedly un-extreme policy: "The ensuing years, though, proved the Plan’s moderation. Market forces alone caused the power industry to meet the Plan’s nationwide emissions target—through exactly the kinds of generation shifting the Plan contemplated."
She lambasts the majority, writing that "there was no reason to reach out to decide this case…But this Court could not wait—even to see what the new rule says—to constrain EPA’s efforts to address climate change."
Constraints that, she continues "fly in the face of the statute Congress wrote," then explaining how. "Congress knows what it doesn’t and can’t know when it drafts a statute; and Congress therefore gives an expert agency the power to address issues—even significant ones—as and when they arise. That is what Congress did in enacting Section 111. The majority today overrides that legislative choice. In so doing, it deprives EPA of the power needed—and the power granted—to curb the emission of greenhouse gases."
The majority opinion indicates the conservative justices "do not really get regulation" and Kagan adds that the "majority merely serves to disadvantage what is often the smartest kind of regulation: market-based programs that achieve the biggest bang for the buck. That is why so many power companies are on EPA’s side in this litigation." In other words, the conservative SCOTUS just struck down what would, in a non-corrupt policy environment, have otherwise been the conservative-preferred market-based policy mechanism!
Then Kagan describes how "some years ago," she said “[w]e’re all textualists now.” But "[t]t seems I was wrong. The current Court is textualist only when being so suits it. When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the ‘major questions doctrine’ magically appear as get-out-of-text-free cards."
And so in the majority’s opinion, "one of those broader goals makes itself clear: Prevent agencies from doing important work, even though that is what Congress directed."
Kagan doesn't pull punches, writing clearly that the Court is shamelessly finding excuses to prevent action on climate.
Finally, the dissenting conclusion:
In short, when it comes to delegations, there are good reasons for Congress (within extremely broad limits) to get to call the shots. Congress knows about how government works in ways courts don’t. More specifically, Congress knows what mix of legislative and administrative action conduces to good policy. Courts should be modest.
Today, the Court is not. Section 111, most naturally read, authorizes EPA to develop the Clean Power Plan—in other words, to decide that generation shifting is the “best system of emission reduction” for power plants churning out carbon dioxide. Evaluating systems of emission reduction is what EPA does. And nothing in the rest of the Clean Air Act, or any other statute, suggests that Congress did not mean for the delegation it wrote to go as far as the text says. In rewriting that text, the Court substitutes its own ideas about delegations for Congress’s. And that means the Court substitutes its own ideas about policymaking for Congress’s. The Court will not allow the Clean Air Act to work as Congress instructed. The Court, rather than Congress, will decide how much regulation is too much.
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. Respectfully, I dissent.
While the conservative justices pretend to be giving Congress the authority that the Executive branch has supposedly usurped from it by having experts design regulations, what they're really doing is seizing that power for themselves. |
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