Radical SCOTUS: EPA Can't Curb Greenhouse Gases

The radical Republican Supreme Court strikes again:

The US Supreme Court restricted the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to curb greenhouse gases from power plants, siding with coal-mining companies and Republican-led states in a blow to President Joe Biden’s climate-change agenda.

The 6-3 ruling interpreting the US Clean Air Act is likely to keep the administration from imposing the type of wide-ranging emissions-cutting plan the EPA tried to put in place when Barack Obama was president. It limits the agency’s available tools amid increasing evidence that climate change is causing rising sea levels and more extreme weather patterns.

The majority said that, while the EPA can regulate power plant emissions, the agency can’t try to shift power generation away from fossil-fuel plants to cleaner sources, as Obama’s Clean Power Plan sought to do. Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said Congress needs to speak more explicitly to give an agency that much power.  [snip]

The court’s three Democratic-appointed justices -- Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan -- dissented.

The ruling casts fresh doubt on Biden’s pledge to reduce US emissions in half by the end of decade and his goal of a carbon-free electric grid by 2035. Hitting those targets will be impossible without regulations to stifle greenhouse gases from oil wells, automobiles and power plants, as well as tax incentives designed to spur clean energy, according to several analyses. 

This ruling is a broad attack on the EPA's ability to issue regulations that have a meaningful impact on climate change, and a victory for the coal companies and polluters.  It's effect will be to make our air more unhealthy and the day of reckoning with climate change closer.  

So, to summarize two recent Republican SCOTUS decisions, clean air and saving the planet, "Bad."  Being forced to bear a rapist's baby, "Good."

(Image:  The reactionary six)

Holy Cow: Seaweed Diet May Cut Their Methane

Scientists are saying that cow flatulence accounts for some 25% of methane gas emissions in the U.S., and that cows should be fed a different diet to reduce it. Australis Aquaculture, a Massachusetts-based agricultural research company, is working on a type of seaweed that could substitute for some or all of cows' current feed and cut down on the bovine tooting. Animal science experts at the University of California-Davis have studied the use of seaweed in cows' diets and support Australis' findings. The only hurdle is to be able to mass produce and distribute the enormous quantities that would be needed:

"Challenges remain, said Ermias Kebreab, a professor of animal science at UC Davis. The seaweed needs more tests to determine if it would impact meat and milk quality from the animals.

The challenge of producing enough of the seaweed is staggering, leading [Australis CEO Josh] Goldman to call it an 'aquatic moonshot.' He estimated that the amount of seaweed needed to reach every cattle operation would be greater than the amount presently farmed in the world."

 Let's wish them the best for the planet's (and the cows') sake.

Administration Releases Ambitious "Clean Power Plan"

The announcement today:

The "Clean Power Plan" is the final version of regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency, which President Barack Obama called "the biggest most important step we've ever taken to combat climate change," in a video released by the White House on social media Saturday night.

Under the plan, the administration will require states to meet specific carbon emission reduction standards, based on their individual energy consumption. The plan also includes an incentive program for states to get a head start on meeting standards on early deployment of renewable energy and low-income energy efficiency.

"Power plants are the single biggest source of harmful carbon pollution that contributes to climate change," Obama said in the video. "Until now, there have been no federal limits to the amount of carbon pollution plants dump in the air."

In addition to a fact sheet, the Administration also released this video:



Meanwhile, the utilities, fossil fuel industry and big business are fighting the regulations, and naturally their contribution-loving pals in the Republican Party are urging states not to comply.  Here's a handy reference from the Natural Resources Defense Council that rebuts many of the climate change deniers' talking points.

Mr. Responsibility

It comes as no surprise that Preznit Chimpy won't be issuing any regulations to control greenhouse gas emissions before his term of office mercifully ends in January 2009.

Despite a ruling from the Supreme Court last year that ordered the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gas emissions were harming human health and welfare, the Bushies are delaying any action on greenhouse gas control regulations until Chimpy exits the Oval Office. Along with the Dickster's editing of Congressional testimony to downplay the impacts of global warming, this ranks up there in the annals of this Assministration's malignant attitude toward the environment, and its own citizens' health.