WASHINGTON (Fwrd Axis) — The Supreme Court on Thursday halted the Environmental Protection Agency’s options for limiting emission green house gas, a major blowback to President Joe Biden’s agenda.
The case in question saw how much power the federal government had in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The Supreme Court said in a 6-3 ruling that the EPA does not have authority to move production away from coal-burning power plants toward cleaner sources, including solar and wind power.
“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day.’ But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body,” he wrote.
Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, wrote in dissent he limits the majority of the court imposed on the EPA’s authority “fly in the face of the statute Congress wrote.
Biden called the decision “devastating” and said it “sides with special interests that have waged a long-term campaign to strip away our right to breathe clean air.”
“I have directed my legal team to work with the Department of Justice and affected agencies to review this decision carefully and find ways that we can, under federal law, continue protecting Americans from harmful pollution, including pollution that causes climate change,” Biden said in a statement.
The decision comes as global climate change exacts an increasingly dire human and economic toll around the world. 1.7 million Americans work in fossil fuel industries, from mining to pipeline construction to electricity generation.
The Biden administration had plans of cutting U.S. carbon pollution in half over the 10 years and shift entirely to clean energy sources by 2035.
