7 ms·

Emphasis mine: > The case against the EPA was brought by West Virginia on behalf of 18 other mostly Republican-led states and some of the nation's largest coal

Emphasis mine: > The case against the EPA was brought by West Virginia on behalf of 18 other mostly Republican-led states and some of the nation's largest coal companies. > > They were challenging whether the agency has the power to regulate planet-warming emissions for state-wide power sectors or just individual power plants. > > These 19 states were worried their power sectors would be regulated and they would be forced to move away from using coal. I'm losing hope that anything practical can be achieved because of idealistic nuance like this. We're missing the forest for the trees. Our goal should be the larger combating of climate change, but individual players like this have amazing power to put up resistance or obstruction to that goal which is a net loss for all of us.

asah 4y ago
Easy for us to say, it's not our jobs being lost. If we really cared about getting this done, we'd simply pay ~$30B/year (0.14%) to enter a contract to buyout 100% of US coal production, and avoid it getting burned. The problem is that China would simply replace that production, netting zero for the environment.
DangitBobby 4y ago
The way I see it, we've found the great filter.
moistrobot 4y ago
if that's your goal, then we should be investing in nuclear energy and putting more pressure on countries like China and India
- gsibble 4y ago
  Agreed. China and India put out significantly more and dirtier pollution than the US and nuclear is the only realistic pathway forward for base emissions-free power. Furthermore, this was the right decision. You can't just have the executive branch make up law. If Congress wants this, they can pass a law. That's how the US works.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  Nuclear and solar and wind and hydro. But that whole business of singling out India and China is BS. If China was split up into 10 smaller countries that together emitted the same amount in aggregate, those 10 smaller countries would fly under the radar. It's only because China happens to be a single country that people point the finger. Per-capita emissions is the thing to be focusing on.
  - mwint 4y ago
    It’s valid to focus on China, because China is where lobbying efforts are best spent. A single huge government making a small change will “do” more than a small government making a small change.
  - mrpopo 4y ago
    People are only using the metrics that make them/their country look best. The USA is topping the chart in cumulative GHG emissions, which is objectively the cause of climate change (carbon stays in the atmosphere).
- timeon 4y ago
  Unfortunately most pro-nuclear talk I see is in form of excuse 'my way or highway'. Like the one you did. As bonus you are trying to shift focus to other actors (which true, are also relevant but still...)
- tzs 4y ago
  India? India's greenhouse gas emissions are 50% of those of the US. Per capita they are at 12% of the US. BTW, per capita is the correct comparison because the atmosphere does not care about arbitrary boundaries. To illustrate imaging a world with just 2 countries, one emitting X per year and one emitting 2X per year. The population of first county is P and the population of the second country is 2P. In this example we'll assume little trade between the two countries. That world needs to get down to a total of 2X per year. If we do thing per country that means each country gets to emit X per year. So the first country is fine where they are and the second country needs to cut emissions in half. To the people of the first country they just continue their normal lifestyle, which generates X/P emissions per capita. The second country has to go from X/P per capita to 1/2 X/P. They will need to make big changes that will likely greatly reduce their standard of living. But then separatist parties, upset with such a big blow to the standard of living, come to power in the second country, and it splits into 9 separate countries, each with population 2P/9. In this new 10 country world, each country's share of the global 2X emission budget is 2/10 X. To meet this the first country has to cut per capita emissions to 20% of what they were before, requiring drastic changes in their economy and lifestyles. The 9 new countries on the other hand only have to each cut per capita emissions to 90% of what they were before. Their standards of living don't have to change much. ...and now there are strong incentives in the first country to split! This only ends when you reach a configuration where every country has the same per capita allowance. Trade complicates it, because now emissions in one country might be going toward doing things for the other country and so should be counted toward the other country's emission budget. That can be dealt with by something like a cap and trade system so countries can trade some of their emissions budget to cover emissions done for them in other countries.
zionic 4y ago
Well the fix here is for Congress to pass a specific law empowering the EPA with explicit authority. If something like that can't make it through congress then it isn't democratic, and the task then becomes one of convincing the other side. I've the had the anti-coal conversation with plenty of conservatives and they were all open to my point of view. Ultimately this court's decision is a win for democracy, even if it is a (temporary) step back for fighting climate change.
- gsibble 4y ago
  Agreed. This isn't about climate change, it's about proper procedure as the Constitution sets it up. The EPA went past its mandated purposes as set up by law. Congress needs to pass a new law to give it this power. If it can't, that's their problem. This was a good decision as far too much power has been given to the administrative state to basically make up laws.
  - kadoban 4y ago
    The current court is starting with an outcome they like and then writing the decision from there. There is no law that will survive a sufficiently motivated cherry-picking of case facts and legal history.
- jimkleiber 4y ago
  I agree. So therefore I want us to fix the gridlock in the legislative branch so they can actually legislate. I think the members of Congress have mostly been captured by the political parties, almost automatically voting with their party line, representing their party more than their actual constituencies. If someone represents my state of Michigan, I believe they don't just represent the Democrats or Republicans who voted for them, but that they're supposed to represent all of the people in the state. When they vote along party lines, it says to me they prioritize their party affiliation over their regional one.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    They vote for the money. The elimination of earmarks has made politicians more dependent on the party and good grace of industry for their elections so they have to tow the party line harder and cater to the lobby more whereas back in the day people could vote against their party if they were bringing home something else to make it worthwhile.
thepasswordis 4y ago
Then tell the EPA to start lobbying the NRC to allow new nuclear plants and start allowing innovation in the space. The EPA is not a legislative body. If you want to make it illegal to run a coal plant because you feel like it’s your duty to force some pain on the citizenry for what you perceive as a higher calling: pass a law.
- politician 4y ago
  100%. We need to stop treating the judiciary as if it were royalty, and instead operate the government using the established rules for change. That means forcing Congress to accept its role and do its job instead of being a place where the members spend most of their time fundraising and trying to keep their seats.
- mrpopo 4y ago
  > Then tell the EPA to start lobbying the NRC to start building new nuclear plants No, stopping the coal plants is the end goal. Whether it's by saving energy or building alternative sources like solar/hydro/nuclear is irrelevant to the EPA's goal (protecting the environment/mitigating climate change). Innovation will not save us, the tools have been here for decades. I agree this should be passed as a law.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Can’t pass a law, too many climate change deniers in political positions. We’ll have to find other mechanisms to force coal plants offline. Lots of tools available besides the EPA.
  - codefreeordie 4y ago
    "can't pass a law because I can't get enough voters to want it" Sounds like maybe you don't believe in democracy
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Sometimes I don’t. The climate doesn’t care about your vote or belief system. So, you have to work around democracy. Play to win, the stakes are too high not to.
jimkleiber 4y ago
I'd argue that one of the main drivers of climate change is this precise behavior: trying to alter the environment to be favorable towards the thing that I own. I see it on a micro level of people trying to kill insects that get into their gardens or moles that ruin their lawns, and a more macro level of my state/country has coal underneath it and therefore we shall fight to continue to use coal or even my state/country doesn't have a lot of arable land for agriculture because of permafrost or access to non-frozen ports for shipping so increasing global temperature may actually be good for us.
- bumby 4y ago
  This is it. Values lead to attitudes when they are directed at an object. Beliefs and attitudes are emotionally biased and largely inform behavior. Unfortunately, beliefs don't have to be correct or even coherent with other beliefs to be strongly held. A person may value a coal mine for a variety of reasons that are very emotionally hinged: economic, familial, etc. To change behavior values and attitudes have to change. That's exceptionally difficult when the competing values, like climate, are more abstract than the ones currently held. I worry that humans are not psychologically equipped to manage problems of this scale.
  - jimkleiber 4y ago
    Change can suck. It can also be great. I think our tendency towards loss aversion makes us focus on how much it can suck. Even if my future might be better, it will be different, and I can want to not lose the thing to which I currently feel attached. > That's exceptionally difficult when the competing values, like climate, are more abstract than the ones currently held. I worry that humans are not psychologically equipped to manage problems of this scale. I think we may be equipped, as we've handled problems on much larger scales than I think our ancestors would have expected, and yet I hear you, wondering what (if anything) could change to make us more equipped. I wonder if reframing our identity could help. Instead of me only being a coal miner or Michigander, I'm also more connected with my human identity. Maybe more backwoods experiences, watching and living TV shows like Alone or Naked and Afraid...I dunno. I wonder if we don't actually have to try to connect to the planet but just more deeply to our local wildlife and to ourselves.
kbuchanan 4y ago
This is a great example of how on an individual level commentators want to bend democratic processes to achieve their own goals, but, without fail, they get caught in a tangle of contradictions. What is the Supreme Court's mandate? To stop climate change? To feel out the majority's opinion and make a legal path for it? This is why democracy is so hard: it consistently yields outcomes that are disappointing to a large segment of the population. There is no "solution" to that problem, and shouldn't be. There are pathways to curbing carbon emissions, but the reality is that too few people, as a body, want to pay that price.
- namdnay 4y ago
  > What is the Supreme Court's mandate? To stop climate change? Stopping climate change should be everyone’s mandate. When your house is on fire and a neighbor has a hose pipe, so you get into an argument with them because they’re not a fireman?
  - alex_sf 4y ago
    Stopping hackers should be everyone's mandate. When your network is under attack and the FBI have stingrays, do you get into an argument with them because they don't have warrants?
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    No. No. Wrong. The Supreme Court's mandate is to be the Supreme Court, not to be the solve-the-current-crisis fixer. I want the planet not to fry and to still have a constitutional democracy at the end of that process. The problem is that people want to handle this "on the cheap", by executive order, rather than by the actual existing mechanism, which is through Congress. Yes, Congress created the EPA. They didn't give them the authority to regulate CO2, though. That was an overreach when the executive order came out, and that reality finally caught up legally. You want to regulate CO2? Then do it the right way - by having Congress pass a bill that grants that power to the EPA. That's the difference between rule of law and rule of the president. You say those states have too much power? No they don't. There's only 18 of them. That's only 36 senators. They don't have a majority of the House, either. So go do it the way it should have been done from the beginning, instead of trying to get away with using a lazy back door. [Edit: Reading other posts here, the issue may not have been CO2 emission, but rather management of the electrical grid. I still think that CO2 was a massive over-reach when the EPA started regulating that. It was almost certainly beyond the scope that Congress conceived of when they created the EPA.]

asah 4y ago

Easy for us to say, it's not our jobs being lost. If we really cared about getting this done, we'd simply pay ~$30B/year (0.14%) to enter a contract to buyout 100% of US coal production, and avoid it getting burned. The problem is that China would simply replace that production, netting zero for the environment.

DangitBobby 4y ago

The way I see it, we've found the great filter.

moistrobot 4y ago

if that's your goal, then we should be investing in nuclear energy and putting more pressure on countries like China and India

gsibble 4y ago
Agreed. China and India put out significantly more and dirtier pollution than the US and nuclear is the only realistic pathway forward for base emissions-free power. Furthermore, this was the right decision. You can't just have the executive branch make up law. If Congress wants this, they can pass a law. That's how the US works.
hackerlight 4y ago
Nuclear and solar and wind and hydro. But that whole business of singling out India and China is BS. If China was split up into 10 smaller countries that together emitted the same amount in aggregate, those 10 smaller countries would fly under the radar. It's only because China happens to be a single country that people point the finger. Per-capita emissions is the thing to be focusing on.
- mwint 4y ago
  It’s valid to focus on China, because China is where lobbying efforts are best spent. A single huge government making a small change will “do” more than a small government making a small change.
- mrpopo 4y ago
  People are only using the metrics that make them/their country look best. The USA is topping the chart in cumulative GHG emissions, which is objectively the cause of climate change (carbon stays in the atmosphere).
timeon 4y ago
Unfortunately most pro-nuclear talk I see is in form of excuse 'my way or highway'. Like the one you did. As bonus you are trying to shift focus to other actors (which true, are also relevant but still...)
tzs 4y ago
India? India's greenhouse gas emissions are 50% of those of the US. Per capita they are at 12% of the US. BTW, per capita is the correct comparison because the atmosphere does not care about arbitrary boundaries. To illustrate imaging a world with just 2 countries, one emitting X per year and one emitting 2X per year. The population of first county is P and the population of the second country is 2P. In this example we'll assume little trade between the two countries. That world needs to get down to a total of 2X per year. If we do thing per country that means each country gets to emit X per year. So the first country is fine where they are and the second country needs to cut emissions in half. To the people of the first country they just continue their normal lifestyle, which generates X/P emissions per capita. The second country has to go from X/P per capita to 1/2 X/P. They will need to make big changes that will likely greatly reduce their standard of living. But then separatist parties, upset with such a big blow to the standard of living, come to power in the second country, and it splits into 9 separate countries, each with population 2P/9. In this new 10 country world, each country's share of the global 2X emission budget is 2/10 X. To meet this the first country has to cut per capita emissions to 20% of what they were before, requiring drastic changes in their economy and lifestyles. The 9 new countries on the other hand only have to each cut per capita emissions to 90% of what they were before. Their standards of living don't have to change much. ...and now there are strong incentives in the first country to split! This only ends when you reach a configuration where every country has the same per capita allowance. Trade complicates it, because now emissions in one country might be going toward doing things for the other country and so should be counted toward the other country's emission budget. That can be dealt with by something like a cap and trade system so countries can trade some of their emissions budget to cover emissions done for them in other countries.

zionic 4y ago

Well the fix here is for Congress to pass a specific law empowering the EPA with explicit authority. If something like that can't make it through congress then it isn't democratic, and the task then becomes one of convincing the other side. I've the had the anti-coal conversation with plenty of conservatives and they were all open to my point of view. Ultimately this court's decision is a win for democracy, even if it is a (temporary) step back for fighting climate change.

gsibble 4y ago
Agreed. This isn't about climate change, it's about proper procedure as the Constitution sets it up. The EPA went past its mandated purposes as set up by law. Congress needs to pass a new law to give it this power. If it can't, that's their problem. This was a good decision as far too much power has been given to the administrative state to basically make up laws.
- kadoban 4y ago
  The current court is starting with an outcome they like and then writing the decision from there. There is no law that will survive a sufficiently motivated cherry-picking of case facts and legal history.
jimkleiber 4y ago
I agree. So therefore I want us to fix the gridlock in the legislative branch so they can actually legislate. I think the members of Congress have mostly been captured by the political parties, almost automatically voting with their party line, representing their party more than their actual constituencies. If someone represents my state of Michigan, I believe they don't just represent the Democrats or Republicans who voted for them, but that they're supposed to represent all of the people in the state. When they vote along party lines, it says to me they prioritize their party affiliation over their regional one.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  They vote for the money. The elimination of earmarks has made politicians more dependent on the party and good grace of industry for their elections so they have to tow the party line harder and cater to the lobby more whereas back in the day people could vote against their party if they were bringing home something else to make it worthwhile.

thepasswordis 4y ago

Then tell the EPA to start lobbying the NRC to allow new nuclear plants and start allowing innovation in the space. The EPA is not a legislative body. If you want to make it illegal to run a coal plant because you feel like it’s your duty to force some pain on the citizenry for what you perceive as a higher calling: pass a law.

politician 4y ago
100%. We need to stop treating the judiciary as if it were royalty, and instead operate the government using the established rules for change. That means forcing Congress to accept its role and do its job instead of being a place where the members spend most of their time fundraising and trying to keep their seats.
mrpopo 4y ago
> Then tell the EPA to start lobbying the NRC to start building new nuclear plants No, stopping the coal plants is the end goal. Whether it's by saving energy or building alternative sources like solar/hydro/nuclear is irrelevant to the EPA's goal (protecting the environment/mitigating climate change). Innovation will not save us, the tools have been here for decades. I agree this should be passed as a law.
toomuchtodo 4y ago
Can’t pass a law, too many climate change deniers in political positions. We’ll have to find other mechanisms to force coal plants offline. Lots of tools available besides the EPA.
- codefreeordie 4y ago
  "can't pass a law because I can't get enough voters to want it" Sounds like maybe you don't believe in democracy
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Sometimes I don’t. The climate doesn’t care about your vote or belief system. So, you have to work around democracy. Play to win, the stakes are too high not to.

jimkleiber 4y ago

I'd argue that one of the main drivers of climate change is this precise behavior: trying to alter the environment to be favorable towards the thing that I own. I see it on a micro level of people trying to kill insects that get into their gardens or moles that ruin their lawns, and a more macro level of my state/country has coal underneath it and therefore we shall fight to continue to use coal or even my state/country doesn't have a lot of arable land for agriculture because of permafrost or access to non-frozen ports for shipping so increasing global temperature may actually be good for us.

bumby 4y ago
This is it. Values lead to attitudes when they are directed at an object. Beliefs and attitudes are emotionally biased and largely inform behavior. Unfortunately, beliefs don't have to be correct or even coherent with other beliefs to be strongly held. A person may value a coal mine for a variety of reasons that are very emotionally hinged: economic, familial, etc. To change behavior values and attitudes have to change. That's exceptionally difficult when the competing values, like climate, are more abstract than the ones currently held. I worry that humans are not psychologically equipped to manage problems of this scale.
- jimkleiber 4y ago
  Change can suck. It can also be great. I think our tendency towards loss aversion makes us focus on how much it can suck. Even if my future might be better, it will be different, and I can want to not lose the thing to which I currently feel attached. > That's exceptionally difficult when the competing values, like climate, are more abstract than the ones currently held. I worry that humans are not psychologically equipped to manage problems of this scale. I think we may be equipped, as we've handled problems on much larger scales than I think our ancestors would have expected, and yet I hear you, wondering what (if anything) could change to make us more equipped. I wonder if reframing our identity could help. Instead of me only being a coal miner or Michigander, I'm also more connected with my human identity. Maybe more backwoods experiences, watching and living TV shows like Alone or Naked and Afraid...I dunno. I wonder if we don't actually have to try to connect to the planet but just more deeply to our local wildlife and to ourselves.

kbuchanan 4y ago

This is a great example of how on an individual level commentators want to bend democratic processes to achieve their own goals, but, without fail, they get caught in a tangle of contradictions. What is the Supreme Court's mandate? To stop climate change? To feel out the majority's opinion and make a legal path for it? This is why democracy is so hard: it consistently yields outcomes that are disappointing to a large segment of the population. There is no "solution" to that problem, and shouldn't be. There are pathways to curbing carbon emissions, but the reality is that too few people, as a body, want to pay that price.

namdnay 4y ago
> What is the Supreme Court's mandate? To stop climate change? Stopping climate change should be everyone’s mandate. When your house is on fire and a neighbor has a hose pipe, so you get into an argument with them because they’re not a fireman?
- alex_sf 4y ago
  Stopping hackers should be everyone's mandate. When your network is under attack and the FBI have stingrays, do you get into an argument with them because they don't have warrants?
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  No. No. Wrong. The Supreme Court's mandate is to be the Supreme Court, not to be the solve-the-current-crisis fixer. I want the planet not to fry and to still have a constitutional democracy at the end of that process. The problem is that people want to handle this "on the cheap", by executive order, rather than by the actual existing mechanism, which is through Congress. Yes, Congress created the EPA. They didn't give them the authority to regulate CO2, though. That was an overreach when the executive order came out, and that reality finally caught up legally. You want to regulate CO2? Then do it the right way - by having Congress pass a bill that grants that power to the EPA. That's the difference between rule of law and rule of the president. You say those states have too much power? No they don't. There's only 18 of them. That's only 36 senators. They don't have a majority of the House, either. So go do it the way it should have been done from the beginning, instead of trying to get away with using a lazy back door. [Edit: Reading other posts here, the issue may not have been CO2 emission, but rather management of the electrical grid. I still think that CO2 was a massive over-reach when the EPA started regulating that. It was almost certainly beyond the scope that Congress conceived of when they created the EPA.]