The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan “until a lower court has resolved the legal case against it”, Curtis Tate reports for McClatchy Newspapers. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is calling the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision a huge victory for the state.
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Morgantown environmental consultant Evan Hansen, who has worked with Van Nostrand on reports studying how West Virginia could comply with the EPA rule, said continuing that sort of work would be the best path for the state to take, even given the Supreme Court’s stay of that rule.
The appeals court said it would hear arguments in the case in June and would likely rule in the fall, during Obama’s last months in the White House.
The regulations were formulated to reduce carbon emissions from us power plants by 2025 being the largest contributor of carbon dioxide emissions world wide pursuant Paris summit talks on climate change held in December a year ago and further replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy. They argued that the plan was an infringement on states’ rights, however that appeal was thrown out. “Citizens no longer accept the deep pockets of Big Oil and Big Coal stopping progress for clean power in Nebraska”.
Colorado’s Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper said the state will keep working on compliance so it “is not left at a disadvantage if the courts uphold all or part of the Clean Power Plan”.
“Pennsylvania will continue planning and engagement with stakeholders on the Clean Power Plan, pending final decision of this issue by the Supreme Court”, Sheridan wrote in an email to StateImpact. The Court’s recent decisions had hinted that the Clean Power Plan might meet with disfavor among the justices.
“Over and over again, the current federal administration-and particularly the EPA-has been ignoring state sovereignty and the rule of law”, said Coffman this week.
US President Barack Obama unveiled a cybersecurity “national action plan” on Tuesday as his intelligence chief warned of growing risks from new technologies that open more doors to hackers.
The White House is looking to downplay the impact of the Supreme Court’s halt of a key carbon rule on the worldwide climate deal reached past year.
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The plan calls for Nebraska to reduce its carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030, using 2012 levels as a starting point. But we’re also on a deadline to address climate change before it’s too late, so the Clean Power Plan is necessary to make this transition happen fast enough.
