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SCOTUS: Clean Air Act Trumps Emissions Lawsuits
schwit1 writes "The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a global warming lawsuit against five big power companies, its most important environmental ruling since 2007 and a victory for the utilities and the Obama administration. The justices unanimously overturned a ruling by a US appeals court that the lawsuit now involving six states can proceed in an effort to force the coal-burning plants to cut emissions of gases that contribute to climate change. In a defeat for environmentalists, the Supreme Court agreed with the companies that regulating greenhouse gases should be left to the Environmental Protection Agency under the clean air laws. The ruling stemmed from a 2004 lawsuit claiming the five electric utilities have created a public nuisance by contributing to climate change. The lawsuit wanted a federal judge to order them to cut their carbon dioxide emissions."
Supreme Court agreed with the companies that regulating greenhouse gases should be left to the Environmental Protection Agency
Yes, and I'm sure they're going to start doing that any day now.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Where did you get that from the story? You think this is actually a step towards strengthening regulation?
We'll trade you the Stanley Cup for a discount.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It would be nice if technology evolves so you could generate your own power easily, perhaps with a few neighbors - and not pay or support any company at all.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
...sometimes they actually get it right. Sort of.
Go figure.
Now if they could only figure out that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and therefore does not fall under the Clean Air Act either...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
This is an interesting ruling to me in that it is more about the balance of power between the three branches of government than it is about the subject of the lawsuit, greenhouse gases in this case.
It has become fairly common for activists to seek court orders to impose their pet issues rather than go through the incredibly slow sausage-making process of legislative reform. This ruling is a smackdown from the Supreme Court saying "no, you six states cannot get a judge to rewrite environmental policy for you. If you want a policy change, you have to do it the old-fashioned way, by getting Congress to tell the EPA what to do. That's why you states have representatives in Congress in the first place."
Regardless of how one feels about CO2 emissions regulation, I think it is none the less a Good Thing that SCOTUS has blocked off this back channel to overriding the normal policy-making process. It's not a sweeping ruling but it is a precedent. Also interesting is that here we have a clear case of the judiciary ruling to limit the power of ... the judiciary. Kind of. How often do you see something like that?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
The true cost, once you factor in the health problems associated with the pollution caused by burning coal, is a hell of a lot higher than 30 or even 40 cents per kwh. Enjoy your cheap energy now, but make sure to put aside at least a hundred thousand dollars to treat your inevitable cancer and/or lung disease.
I love it when someone wants to track the total cost... and then proceeds to leave out factors.
Why don't you include the health BENEFITS of having a reliable power grid and the advanced society that power grid facilitates? Oh I see, the power you use comes from little faeries that fly out your ass while you're shoving your head up it.
We can get those benefits from nuclear power while causing 1/100,000 as many cancers. We need coal-burning energy production like we need injections of benzene.
Oh for crying out loud. While I'm sure that breathing crap is bad for you cancer and/or lung disease is not inevitable. Just like smokers that inhale 3 packs a day and live into their 80's and 90's and some die in their 40's it's all pretty much up to the physical ability of the individual's body to resist the poison. Meanwhile continuing to run the price of electricity out of sight affects everyone right now. I haven't read the actual figures on how much pollution we're talking about here but I know in the last 30 to 40 years that pollution in general where I live has pretty much been stable. Population has gone up but pollution controls have about kept pace with the growth. I'd like it to go lower, who wouldn't, but I'm not prepared to pay another 2 or 3 hundred dollars a month in electric bills to do it.
But would you be willing to breath an atmosphere that was 100% carbon dioxide? No?
g=
Er, no, however one that was 100% oxygen (or pretty much any gas) would be just as toxic for you and me...should the Clean Air Act cover oxygen emissions as well?
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
It does cover ozone.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
The ruling states that the CAA "displaces" the plaintiff's rights to sue. Meaning that now, we all have fewer rights to sue under the common law, even if the emitters are unequivocally imposing on our rights, such as that to clean air. And this could be applied elsewhere, including, say, contaminated drugs, if SCOTUS were to find the federal law had "displaced" our common law rights.
I find that limiting, not empowering.
...and I would love to see nuclear provide 75% of our power but the same environmentalists who hate coal also hate nuclear. To them, cheap energy (no matter the source) is the problem. Of course cheap energy has done more to lift civilization out of poverty then anything else.
We need coal-burning energy production like we need injections of benzene.
But, I love benzene! It's so yummy and )*&^&^%*&^[NO CARRIER]
Similar to the upcoming US election results
If companies were dumping enough oxygen into the air for it to be a threat to our quality of life, then yes.
I am confused by the article. It could mean one of two very different things:
1) The states passed laws requiring the corporations to cut their emissions even further than what the EPA required. The companies did not comply so the states sued. The Supreme Court ruled that the state laws do not trump the federal law, so they cannot be enforced.
-- OR --
2) The states sued the companies for damages, even though the companies complied with the federal law.
The implications are very different. The first one would surprise me: it seems like a states rights issue. States often times impose local environmental restrictions that may be beyond the federal requirements. If it was the latter, then I am not surprised. This happens all the time with anything where there is any form of regulation or standard practice. If the entity is following the regulation or best practice, they are generally immune from suits. Ex: Suppose a boat captain requires everyone to wear a life jacket, properly maintains the boat according to all the rules, has coast guard inspections, training, certificates, etc.... the captain is probably not liable if the boat catches fire and kills someone . Often times the regulatory body gets sued instead. In the above example, the coast guard may be sued for having lax rules.
no, it's not. It is an essentially random process.
The coal particle get lodged into your lung, causing a tiny lesion. Cell growth is activated around it and the particle get encapsulated. This extra growth spurt might, or might not cause some of the cells to mutate. The mutation might, or might not, lead to cancer.
Some people are more susceptible, yes. But the development is random. Being healthy, or rich will not help you at all.
If companies were dumping enough oxygen into the air for it to be a threat to our quality of life, then yes.
Afraid the trees and other assorted greenery have that covered...damn things are always trying to blow us up, consuming all that safe, inert CO2 and pumping out all that highly flammable and explosive O2...;)
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Pollution has been extensively documented to cross state lines. Of course this is an interstate commerce issue. I'm surprised this comment needs to be stated.
You can do anything you want as long as you don't fry the frickin' planet.
Is that too much to ask? Apparently yes for many people.
And don't give me "the science is wrong" crap. I heard it straight from the co-chair of working group 1 of the IPCC last week.
The science is high-quality. The predictions are getting worse (for us) every time they are revised. The evidence that humans
are a major cause is clear. As the CO2 is increasing, O2 is decreasing correspondingly, showing that the CO2 emissions
are from combustion processes. "The science is wrong" is a desperate last-ditch appeal by the ignorant or malicious to
the ignorant.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Of course cheap energy has done more to lift civilization out of poverty then anything else.
Read 'Ecoscience' co-authored by John P. Holdren (science Czar) and you'll understand that you hit it right on the nail. It has nothing to do with the environment, cheap energy is a very serious problem to these guys. They started at the forefront of the eugenicist movement (Holdren is a self-proclaimed malthusian) and now they're at the forefront of the global warming hysteria. If one is to believe what's in that book, the solution is de-industrialization of the world so that we can no longer sustain as large a population as we have now. According to the book, a billion is the magic 'sustainable' figure.
'Think of the environment' is the new 'think of the children'. Yes, there are very serious environmental issues but sadly, these issues are way too useful to our leadership as excuses to push an agenda to warrant implementation of any real solutions.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Well, in the 19th century the price of oil dropped by 80% and the U.S. when from a bankrupt, third-world nation to the largest manufacturer on Earth. I would sure hate to live in a world like that.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
1) What is wrong with hydrocarbon-driven peaking, where needed? The point is not ideological purity; the point is getting our carbon emissions down. And it that equals geographically-distributed wind + solar + NG where needed for peaking..... so? What matters is that the coal comes off the grid and most of the energy comes from low or no carbon sources.
2) Conventional hydro is more than sufficient for peaking in the west, although in some places you need to uprate plants (but that's pretty cheap).
3) Storage can also act as peaking. At present, the most cost effective method is pumped hydro, which only adds 1-2 cents per kilowatt hour. It's so cheap that it's already extensively used in China -- not to balance out supply variation, but to balance out *demand* variation. I would not be surprised at all to find direct electrochemical or electrostatic energy storage dominating in 2-3 decades.
4) EGS/SWEGS can also act as peaking, or baseload.
But I'll jot down a note that you'd much rather make fun of your ideological foes with straw men than sit down to a serious debate.
Seen on a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use."
Just like smokers that inhale 3 packs a day and live into their 80's and 90's and some die in their 40's it's all pretty much up to the physical ability of the individual's body to resist the poison.
And that makes it ok to spew this crap in the air?
The EPA is filled with energy company executies and lobbiests who hate the environment and favor polluters. This all started under Reagan and Bush even hired an oil company lobbiest from Chevron or Enron to head the EPA!
This is why the suite was brought up and the bad guys one. The EPA will simply not enforce it unless people are falling dead in the streets as they work to help out the polluters. I have no idea what this is even legal to begin with, but we saw during deep water horizon just how corrupt the government's drilling and natural resource departments under the department of interior were. The heads of these departments have gifts from oil companies on their desks and the same inspectors also interview for jobs by the same companies by looking the other way and not doing their job.
http://saveie6.com/
Yes. Since the obama administration believes itself to be above, and not required to follow the law. To the point where it uses lawyers to 'bypass' regulation.
Om, nomnomnom...
enacting "laws" via states suing in federal court would be horrible public policy, it would create an (even more) unaccountable secondary legislature and signing committee made up of the states attorneys general and the SCOTUS
this is not the way laws and rules are supposed to be made.
I strongly agree with regulating CO2 emissions but it must be done in a constitutionally proper manner or the whole thing lacks legitimacy
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Why am I condescending? Final point...
Name ONE energy source the environmentalists will approve!
Wind, kills birds, it's ugly
Solar, alters the desert echo system, the chemicals are too bad in the manufacture process
Hydro, Destroys too much land creating the reservoir
Coal, natural gas, oil, --- CO2
Nuclear --- Radiation
Geothermal, destroys the echo system...
Oh I almost forgot... These wackos won't even let us build power lines between the power generation and the location the power is used...
And On and On...
No matter what the source is, those wackos find something to complain about.
Bottom line, coal isn't that bad... The hype about CO2 is just that, hype... So you want to find an alternative to get rid of CO2. But while you have all of these great ideas of other sources, the environmentalists WILL NOT let you build them in sufficient quantities to actually meet the demand. So, this continued discussion is just a WASTE of time because there isn't an environmentally friendly solution. Therefore, the only environmentally friendly solution is for us to live in caves sucking slime off the walls for nourishment. WHEN the ENVIRONMENTALISTS come forward with an energy source that can meet the nations needs then we can discuss alternatives... You know when that will happen? NEVER!!!
If the Republicans had been in power, the government would have taken the same position. This has nothing to do with the Obama administration.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
So no, CO2 is not a pollutant. It is not a threat to our health. It is plant food.
Err... no, CO2 is a threat to human health, but that's not the only definition of a pollutant.
Your argument is that we would never be raising concentrations of CO2 to sufficient levels to cause human breathing difficulties, and sure that situation could never occur. However, you could say similar things for other regulated pollutants - but we don't just consider the impact on human health when considering what pollutants to regulate.
If you take the dictionary definition of pollution, that "Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem", then CO2 is definitely going to fall under that. Given legalese is all about defining terms and assessing them against other terms, unregulated CO2 emissions causing instability, disorder or discomfort to the ecosystem has been assessed by experts in the field as being a high likelihood. You're just quibbling over the impact.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
I'm an environmentalist, and I'm big on solar, wind, and geothermal, like 95%+ of people who would tag themselves similarly.
QED, you have been disproven.
FYI, most of the people opposing big projects -- let's say, Cape Wind -- are not environmental groups, although they hide under that guise. Cape Wind was mainly opposed by wealthy landowners afraid it would lower their property values.
Seen on a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use."