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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.
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/
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.
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...
Well, anything is a pollutant in high enough quantities, but sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. The climate WILL change. If not from AWG, then from something else. Perhaps a meteor strike, or a massive volcano, or decreased/increased solar activity. Better to focus on creating an upwardly mobile society that can more easily adapt to these inevitable changes than to risk making society poorer and therefore less able to adapt. Within reason of course. Not to advocate for slash and burn in the name of economic expansion, but we're not ready to run our economies on windmills and horse manure yet.
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.
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...
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."
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!!!