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From the Supreme Court's majority opinion: > a decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear d

From the Supreme Court's 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. Honestly it's hard to see how that position is unreasonable. If Congress wants the EPA to have this power, let them vote to give it. If Congress does not want the EPA to have this power, then the EPA shouldn't attempt to exercise power they don't have. There's really no other solution if we're going to have a representative government.

epistasis 4y ago
Congress did vote for EPA to have this power. The Supreme Court decided that they didn't like where that power led, and is now restricting the types of laws that Congress can make.
- rayiner 4y ago
  Congress voted in 1970 for the EPA to have the power to address climate change by controlling the nationwide mix of power generators? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_(United_States) I think if you asked any of the folks in 1970 whether that was the intent of the Clean Air Act they’d be surprised.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    I don't understand why your question could possibly be answered by anything but a yes. Can you provide any evidence that regulating clean air does not apply to air pollutants? If a person thinks that CO2 is not air pollution, then the onus is on them to show that it's not. Repealing an entire class of laws in order to stop undesired scientific conclusions is not a good way to set legal precedent.
    - mlindner 4y ago
      How did that act give carte blanche to the federal government to basically completely commandeer the electricity sector in each state? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Power_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Power_Plan > The plan will require individual states to meet specific standards with respect to reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.[22] States are free to reduce emissions by various means, and must submit emissions reductions plans by September 2016, or, with an extension approval, by September 2018.[23] If a state has not submitted a plan by then, the EPA will impose its own plan on that state.[23]
      - epistasis 4y ago
        It's not commandeering the electricity sector, it's regulating air pollution. This is not carte Blanche, it was laid out in great detail through the executive authority and extensively documented to be within the authority of the EPA. However, some politicians didn't like this outcome. They didn't have the votes, so they are legislating from the bench. There's no other way to view this. What you call "commandeering" is exactly the same as all the other regulations, like sulphuric oxide for acid rain. It's just that some people have politics that takes precedence over the possible scientific outcomes.
      - rayiner 4y ago
        The Clean Air Act embodies a very specific mechanism. It gives the EPA the power to set emissions limits, but provides that those limits must be based on the capabilities of emissions reduction systems, mainly scrubbers of various sorts. And there’s different levels for new versus preexisting sources. So for a new source, the, EPA can set the limit at a level that can only be achieved with BACT (best available control technology). For an existing source, it can only set the limit at a level achievable by lesser control technology. The thing about CO2 is that there is no control technology you can install on a plant to scrub out the CO2. That would ordinarily preclude the EPA from setting an emissions limit—because it can only set those limits based on what control technologies can achieve. So what the EPA did was say that states could meet the emissions targets by switching from coal to renewable sources, and justified setting an emissions limit on the theory that this was an “emissions reduction system” under the statute.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      The Clean Air Act doesn’t give the EPA blanket authority to “regulate clean air.” Congress can’t permissibly delegate an entire sector over to an administrative agency under the Constitution, and didn’t. The statute gives the EPA specific approaches that it’s allowed to use.
      - epistasis 4y ago
        The EPA was following the statute when it made its carbon ruling. Past actions of the EPA have been similar, though you phrase it as "delegate an entire sector over to an administrative agency," it's exactly what's been done in the past. The only difference this time is that it's CO2 as the pollutant, and fossil fuel interests are extremely politically powerful, and don't like the science that shows that CO2 is a pollutant. That's it. Remember when the ruling happened, and all sorts of people were like "CO2 can't be a pollutant"? This is the outcome of that thought. If EPA did not have this authority, by law, then this would have been challenged on much easier grounds far before. In order for the EPA's actions to be overturned, the court had to overturn the very law itself.
        rayiner 4y ago
        This ruling has nothing to do with whether CO2 is a “pollutant.” Congress cannot delegate a sector to an agency, because agencies are executive branch entities and the executive branch can’t make laws. Executive branch agencies operate under the fiction that they are merely enforcing laws Congress has created. That’s why Congress can’t delegate agencies the power to make rules with the force of law in an entire sector. It has to be more specific, so that the agency is simply “filling in the details.” And the Clean Air Act is specific. It allows the EPA to fill in the details about pollutants and emissions levels. But it doesn’t give the EPA blanket authority to do whatever is necessary to achieve those targets. It has a detailed menu of measures, such as requiring particular types of emissions control technology on individual plants. In this case the EPA told the entire energy sector to switch away from coal to renewables. That wasn’t on the list of measures available under the Clean Air Act.
        4y ago
- mlindner 4y ago
  How do you know what Congress was thinking? You can't read the mind of Congress. Also, the Supreme Court has always restricted the types of laws that Congress can pass, based on what the Constitution says. However this doesn't involve Constitutionality. Congress can absolutely pass a law giving this exact power to the EPA and the Supreme Court couldn't touch it.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    I don't know what they were thinking, but I know what they wrote in the law.
  - watwut 4y ago
    Supreme Court is just polical and radical at that. That is all there is to it.
woodruffw 4y ago
> If Congress wants the EPA to have this power, let them vote to give it That is precisely what they did. It was called the Clean Air Act, and Congress passed it in 1963. SCOTUS's reasoning here is hinky, to use an official legal term: it's clear that Congress has empowered the EPA here, but that SCOTUS finds it easier to claim that they never truly did rather than that they oughtn't to have.
- mlindner 4y ago
  > That is precisely what they did. It was called the Clean Air Act, and Congress passed it in 1963. Given that the danger of CO2 was completely unknown in 1963 and green energy technologies almost didn't exist. I'm not sure how you can claim that.
  - gnulinux 4y ago
    > Given that the danger of CO2 was completely unknown in 1963 This is a bizarre claim! From https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ > In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. In 1938, Guy Callendar connected carbon dioxide increases in Earth's atmosphere to global warming. Also read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_sc...
    - mlindner 4y ago
      Rather than "completely" maybe it would have been more correct to say "widely". The idea of global warming basically started in the late 60s with a very few scientists talking about it. Rediscovering old previously discredited scientific papers from the late 19th and early 20th century doesn't make it date all the way back to then.
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        This simply misses the point. Very few laws are restricted to the best science of their day: nearly all allow for administrative interpretation so that the US Government can apply the law without having to relitigate its essential qualities. The CAA empowers the EPA to identify pollutants, and that's what the EPA has (correctly!) done. Whether or not the scientific consensus from the 1960s agrees is immaterial.
d--b 4y ago
The dissenting justices argue that congress already voted to give EPA the mandate to address air pollution. The majority opinion is that “climate change” is a different issue than “air pollution”. For my part, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that CO2 emissions aren’t covered by the clean air act. And since the decision clearly follows the conservative agenda, it’s hard to not see it as a politically-driven decision.
- mlindner 4y ago
  Firstly, I agree global warming is happening, and that it's caused by humans, and that we should be working to stop it. However, CO2 emissions are not pollutants in the normal sense of the term. They do not directly harm human health by their existence in the environment.
  - myownpetard 4y ago
    But the second order negative effects have been demonstrated with an incredible amount of scientific rigor. This is like saying we shouldn't ban an industrial chemical that is destroying US wheat production but does not directly impact human health.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    > They do not directly harm human health by their existence in the environment. This is "the donkey hung the man, not the executor yoking the donkey" logic. We have overwhelming evidence that CO2 emissions are a primary efficient cause for climate change, which we have overwhelming reason to believe will directly harm the lives and welfare of billions. It doesn't matter that we won't die of CO2 asphyxiation itself, because neither the CAA nor common sense establishes that standard.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      The parent statement is not that CO2 is harmless, but that it is not a pollutant. Not everything that leads to harm is pollution.
dyslexit 4y ago
Unfortunately for the rest of the world climate change doesn't wait to see what a Congress hamstrung by one political party that denies its very existence is going to do. That change has no political reality of coming from that branch, neither now not in any reasonable future that's going to matter.
patrick451 4y ago
Indeed. Un-elected regulatory agencies arrogating astronomic levels of power is far bigger danger than CO2 in the atmosphere.

epistasis 4y ago

Congress did vote for EPA to have this power. The Supreme Court decided that they didn't like where that power led, and is now restricting the types of laws that Congress can make.

rayiner 4y ago
Congress voted in 1970 for the EPA to have the power to address climate change by controlling the nationwide mix of power generators? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_(United_States) I think if you asked any of the folks in 1970 whether that was the intent of the Clean Air Act they’d be surprised.
- epistasis 4y ago
  I don't understand why your question could possibly be answered by anything but a yes. Can you provide any evidence that regulating clean air does not apply to air pollutants? If a person thinks that CO2 is not air pollution, then the onus is on them to show that it's not. Repealing an entire class of laws in order to stop undesired scientific conclusions is not a good way to set legal precedent.
  - mlindner 4y ago
    How did that act give carte blanche to the federal government to basically completely commandeer the electricity sector in each state? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Power_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Power_Plan > The plan will require individual states to meet specific standards with respect to reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.[22] States are free to reduce emissions by various means, and must submit emissions reductions plans by September 2016, or, with an extension approval, by September 2018.[23] If a state has not submitted a plan by then, the EPA will impose its own plan on that state.[23]
    - epistasis 4y ago
      It's not commandeering the electricity sector, it's regulating air pollution. This is not carte Blanche, it was laid out in great detail through the executive authority and extensively documented to be within the authority of the EPA. However, some politicians didn't like this outcome. They didn't have the votes, so they are legislating from the bench. There's no other way to view this. What you call "commandeering" is exactly the same as all the other regulations, like sulphuric oxide for acid rain. It's just that some people have politics that takes precedence over the possible scientific outcomes.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      The Clean Air Act embodies a very specific mechanism. It gives the EPA the power to set emissions limits, but provides that those limits must be based on the capabilities of emissions reduction systems, mainly scrubbers of various sorts. And there’s different levels for new versus preexisting sources. So for a new source, the, EPA can set the limit at a level that can only be achieved with BACT (best available control technology). For an existing source, it can only set the limit at a level achievable by lesser control technology. The thing about CO2 is that there is no control technology you can install on a plant to scrub out the CO2. That would ordinarily preclude the EPA from setting an emissions limit—because it can only set those limits based on what control technologies can achieve. So what the EPA did was say that states could meet the emissions targets by switching from coal to renewable sources, and justified setting an emissions limit on the theory that this was an “emissions reduction system” under the statute.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    The Clean Air Act doesn’t give the EPA blanket authority to “regulate clean air.” Congress can’t permissibly delegate an entire sector over to an administrative agency under the Constitution, and didn’t. The statute gives the EPA specific approaches that it’s allowed to use.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      The EPA was following the statute when it made its carbon ruling. Past actions of the EPA have been similar, though you phrase it as "delegate an entire sector over to an administrative agency," it's exactly what's been done in the past. The only difference this time is that it's CO2 as the pollutant, and fossil fuel interests are extremely politically powerful, and don't like the science that shows that CO2 is a pollutant. That's it. Remember when the ruling happened, and all sorts of people were like "CO2 can't be a pollutant"? This is the outcome of that thought. If EPA did not have this authority, by law, then this would have been challenged on much easier grounds far before. In order for the EPA's actions to be overturned, the court had to overturn the very law itself.
      - rayiner 4y ago
        This ruling has nothing to do with whether CO2 is a “pollutant.” Congress cannot delegate a sector to an agency, because agencies are executive branch entities and the executive branch can’t make laws. Executive branch agencies operate under the fiction that they are merely enforcing laws Congress has created. That’s why Congress can’t delegate agencies the power to make rules with the force of law in an entire sector. It has to be more specific, so that the agency is simply “filling in the details.” And the Clean Air Act is specific. It allows the EPA to fill in the details about pollutants and emissions levels. But it doesn’t give the EPA blanket authority to do whatever is necessary to achieve those targets. It has a detailed menu of measures, such as requiring particular types of emissions control technology on individual plants. In this case the EPA told the entire energy sector to switch away from coal to renewables. That wasn’t on the list of measures available under the Clean Air Act.
        4y ago
mlindner 4y ago
How do you know what Congress was thinking? You can't read the mind of Congress. Also, the Supreme Court has always restricted the types of laws that Congress can pass, based on what the Constitution says. However this doesn't involve Constitutionality. Congress can absolutely pass a law giving this exact power to the EPA and the Supreme Court couldn't touch it.
- epistasis 4y ago
  I don't know what they were thinking, but I know what they wrote in the law.
- watwut 4y ago
  Supreme Court is just polical and radical at that. That is all there is to it.

woodruffw 4y ago

> If Congress wants the EPA to have this power, let them vote to give it That is precisely what they did. It was called the Clean Air Act, and Congress passed it in 1963. SCOTUS's reasoning here is hinky, to use an official legal term: it's clear that Congress has empowered the EPA here, but that SCOTUS finds it easier to claim that they never truly did rather than that they oughtn't to have.

mlindner 4y ago
> That is precisely what they did. It was called the Clean Air Act, and Congress passed it in 1963. Given that the danger of CO2 was completely unknown in 1963 and green energy technologies almost didn't exist. I'm not sure how you can claim that.
- gnulinux 4y ago
  > Given that the danger of CO2 was completely unknown in 1963 This is a bizarre claim! From https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ > In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. In 1938, Guy Callendar connected carbon dioxide increases in Earth's atmosphere to global warming. Also read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_sc...
  - mlindner 4y ago
    Rather than "completely" maybe it would have been more correct to say "widely". The idea of global warming basically started in the late 60s with a very few scientists talking about it. Rediscovering old previously discredited scientific papers from the late 19th and early 20th century doesn't make it date all the way back to then.
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      This simply misses the point. Very few laws are restricted to the best science of their day: nearly all allow for administrative interpretation so that the US Government can apply the law without having to relitigate its essential qualities. The CAA empowers the EPA to identify pollutants, and that's what the EPA has (correctly!) done. Whether or not the scientific consensus from the 1960s agrees is immaterial.

d--b 4y ago

The dissenting justices argue that congress already voted to give EPA the mandate to address air pollution. The majority opinion is that “climate change” is a different issue than “air pollution”. For my part, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that CO2 emissions aren’t covered by the clean air act. And since the decision clearly follows the conservative agenda, it’s hard to not see it as a politically-driven decision.

mlindner 4y ago
Firstly, I agree global warming is happening, and that it's caused by humans, and that we should be working to stop it. However, CO2 emissions are not pollutants in the normal sense of the term. They do not directly harm human health by their existence in the environment.
- myownpetard 4y ago
  But the second order negative effects have been demonstrated with an incredible amount of scientific rigor. This is like saying we shouldn't ban an industrial chemical that is destroying US wheat production but does not directly impact human health.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  > They do not directly harm human health by their existence in the environment. This is "the donkey hung the man, not the executor yoking the donkey" logic. We have overwhelming evidence that CO2 emissions are a primary efficient cause for climate change, which we have overwhelming reason to believe will directly harm the lives and welfare of billions. It doesn't matter that we won't die of CO2 asphyxiation itself, because neither the CAA nor common sense establishes that standard.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    The parent statement is not that CO2 is harmless, but that it is not a pollutant. Not everything that leads to harm is pollution.

dyslexit 4y ago

Unfortunately for the rest of the world climate change doesn't wait to see what a Congress hamstrung by one political party that denies its very existence is going to do. That change has no political reality of coming from that branch, neither now not in any reasonable future that's going to matter.

patrick451 4y ago

Indeed. Un-elected regulatory agencies arrogating astronomic levels of power is far bigger danger than CO2 in the atmosphere.