Supreme Court's climate ruling is 'bad to pretty bad,' not disastrous
Nina Farah · How bad is the Supreme Court’s decision on climate? · Jul 1, 2022 · at 13:46
Energy law reporter Nina Farah assesses the severity of the Supreme Court's West Virginia v. EPA ruling on federal climate regulation.
0:00 / 0:23exact quote · 23.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I would say bad to pretty bad. I think mainly because it's definitely not the worst for EPA because it has that flexibility still to look at other solutions. It doesn't require only regulations that focus on the power plant itself, so that makes it less bad than it could be.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Nina Farah
Chief Justice Roberts argued the inactive Clean Power Plan posed potential harm
“Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion for this case, and his argument was actually that even though EPA had said that the Clean Power Plan was off the books, it didn't intend to go back to it wanted to start fresh, he argued that this rule was …”
The West Virginia ruling limits EPA power established in Massachusetts v. EPA
“What the Supreme Court's decision does is limit the power that was recognized to regulate greenhouse gases under that Massachusetts versus EPA decision. That recognized that EPA was required to regulate greenhouse gases.”
Legal observers warned the Supreme Court EPA ruling risked being advisory
“We saw the states and a couple coal companies go to the Supreme Court and file individual petitions to have their case reheard, and there was a lot of skepticism, actually, that this case could actually make it to the court because there was no rule in place. …”
The Supreme Court ruling does not eliminate market-based emissions trading approaches
“Emissions trading is another approach that, you know, power plants can use credits to operate if they're emitting too much and use a marketplace kind of approach. Those kinds of things don't seem like they're off the table from this ruling.”
Restricting generation shifting may slow the pace of US emissions reductions
“So if generation shifting as a basis for a rule is off the table, it might make it harder for EPA to, and the US more broadly, to cut emissions at the pace that the Biden administration is looking to do.”
Supreme Court kept major questions scope consistent with FDA and CDC precedents
“That interpretation is very similar to what we saw with other recent cases. So can FDA regulate tobacco, or can CDC, for example, issue an eviction moratorium? And so we aren't seeing the court come out and broaden the scope of how it's looking at major questi…”