Supreme Court Decision on Large Scale Carbon Emissions
As of Monday, [June 23 2014] in a seven-two ruling, the Supreme Court decided to uphold the Environmental Protection Agency’s pursuit to issue the Clean Air Act (Liptak, 2014). The Clean Air Act proposed by the EPA aims to require “that carbon pollution be addressed in permits for large emitters, such as power plants and refineries” (Avi, 2014). The EPA, after receiving validation from none other than the Supreme Court, hopes to put into motion a set of legislative dominos. After this win the EPA would like to push forward acts such as the Carbon Pollution Standard and the Clean Power Plan next on the docket for national affect (Avi, 2014).
The decision on Monday only effects the largest stationary carbon emitters within the US; be it power plants, refineries, and industrial sources via permit control (Avi, 2014). These large sources are responsible for roughly 86% this nation’s carbon emissions (Liptak, 2014). Following this federal decision however the EPA now has the power to regulate 83% of that (Barnes, 2014). Both the EPA and the Court decided that going after small emitters would prove difficult on almost all fronts. In a five-four ruling the Supreme Court noted that the EPA “has no power to ‘tailor’ legislation to bureaucratic policy goals by rewriting unambiguous statutory terms” noted by Justice Scalia after the hearing (Liptak, 2014).
To Continue Reading…
- Barnes, Robert. 2014. “Supreme Court: EPA can regulate greenhouse gas emissions, with some limits”. The Washington Post. June 24, 2014. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-limits-epas-ability-to-regulate-greenhouse-gas-emissions/2014/06/23/c56fc194-f1b1-11e3-914c-1fbd0614e2d4_story.html>
- Garbow, Avi. 2014. “Another Favorable Opinion from the Supreme Court”. EPA Connect. June 23, 2014. <http://blog.epa.gov/epaconnect/2014/06/another-favorable-opinion-from-the-supreme-court/>
- Liptak, Adam. 2014. “Justices Uphold Emission Limits on Big Industry”. New York Times. June 23, 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/us/justices-with-limits-let-epa-curb-power-plant-gases.html?_r=0>
Taylor Pratt-Houle