The Supreme Court granted a stay on the Clean Power Plan, giving hope to the coal industry and its allies such as Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell.
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The rule’s opponents don’t think there should be a replacement, and they predicted that the Supreme Court’s ruling would make it impossible for that to happen.
This new line is, at best, an awkward one, because the EPA and its allies previously made no bones about the close link between the regulations and the global treaty.
The decision shocked many court watchers, dismayed those in favor of strong climate action and elicited comparisons to the infamous Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, with many saying that the court had once again abandoned judicial restraint and legal reasoning in favor of bald political gamesmanship.
But Tom Livers, director of the state Department of Environmental Quality, said the council was focused exclusively on advising on Montana’s compliance to the clean power rules. The rule is being challenged in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and the stay prevents the rule from becoming effective until the DC Circuit issues a ruling on the merits and the Supreme Court takes final action on appeals from that ruling. That can not possibly be the case, with evidence of climate change all around and temperature data that showthat the Earth experienced its warmest years on record the last two years. TVA’s aging fleet of coal-fired power plants, most built more than a half century ago, must be shut down or retrofitted with pollution controls to comply with air pollution regulations even prior to the carbon limits EPA proposed two years ago in its Clean Power Plan. Such a loss of momentum could quickly snowball, causing more nations to signal their intent to delay.
Meyer also said that unlike 15 years ago, when President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto climate accord negotiated under the Clinton administration, the worldwide community would hold a future president accountable for America’s promises if she or he “went rogue” on the Paris accord, likely by blocking cooperation in trade, security, and other arenas.
He noted that when an agency “claims to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate a significant portion of the American economy, we typically greet its announcement with a measure of skepticism”.
Methane is “the next big opportunity”, Sierra Club’s Hitt said. For many companies, moving forward with the Clean Power Plan process makes good business sense.
“The Paris Agreement will ride through this”, he said. After all, coal-fired power generation is undergoing a steady decline in the USA and has been since before the EPA’s rules came out – thanks in large part to advances in solar and wind power and the low price of natural gas. Cincinnati has helped small businesses negotiate group deals for renewable power.
Though they didn’t mention the Supreme Court’s decision during Thursday’s debate, candidates did briefly mention environmental concerns more generally.
Schultz said the US would continue to take aggressive steps to continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, citing other regulations it has put in place to reduce emissions from automobiles, airplanes and the oil and gas sector.
“The states involved are proud to have reduced Carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 40 percent in the last 10 years”, she said.
To protect their residents, states should immediately suspend all compliance efforts, an approach we are calling “Stop Work Now”. The passing of the court’s leading conservative boosted the plan’s prospects of survival.
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That said, Larsen acknowledged that some countries may be concerned since the Clean Power Plan is the “most global visible climate policy” that Washington has presented thus far.
