Justices limit existing EPA global warming rules
MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court today placed limits on the sole Obama administration program already in place to deal with power plant and factory emissions of gases blamed for global warming.
The justices said that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks authority in some cases to force companies to evaluate ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This rule applies when a company needs a permit to expand facilities or build new ones that would increase overall pollution. Carbon dioxide is the chief gas linked to global warming.
The decision does not affect EPA proposals for first-time national standards for new and existing power plants. The most recent proposal aims at a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, but won’t take effect for at least another two years.
The outcome also preserves EPA’s authority over facilities that already emit pollutants that the agency regulates other than greenhouse gases. EPA called the decision “a win for our efforts to reduce carbon pollution because it allows EPA, states and other permitting authorities to continue to require carbon pollution limits in permits for the largest pollution sources.”
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, said “EPA is getting almost everything it wanted in this case.” Scalia said the agency wanted to regulate 86 percent of all greenhouse gases emitted from plants nationwide. The agency will be able to regulate 83 percent of the emissions under the ruling, Scalia said. The court voted 7-2 in this portion of the decision, with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas saying they would bar all regulation of greenhouse gases under the permitting program.
Full story: http://www.chicoer.com/breakingnews/ci_26016656/justices-limit-existing-epa-global-warming-rules
OK.
We only got ‘3%’ improvement. However, with a lot of hard grassroots work, we canget the other 97% in the next 2 elections cycles! November 2014 is coming up fast with critical US House and Senate seats up for grabs. If we work really hard to put responsible conservatives in office now, it will further weaken Obama’s support as we head to the November 2016 election cycle.
We have 2 choices.
We can whine about the injustice of this megalomaniac socialist administration back and forth in blog echo chambers for the next 2 years and achieve nothing, or…..
We can get off our collective keisters and work our buns off to get conservatives elected that will help limit further damage by limiting EPA funding and exercising greater discretion on judicial approvals to the federal and supreme court benches.
Mac
“…with a lot of hard grassroots work…We can get off our collective keisters and work our buns off to get conservatives elected that will help limit further damage by limiting EPA funding and exercising greater discretion on judicial approvals to the federal and supreme court benches.”
Sounds good and by all means have a go at it. However, that is so twentieth century. That boat has sailed. What we have now is a ruling class divided into two parties. Our present form of government is an oligarchy. That’s what is meant by “We can’t vote our way out of this.”
“Can anyone tell me how does a US president acquire such absolute power like in the days of monarchs Americans supposedly overthrew to become a republic?”
Because Congress won’t impeach him, or shut down the EPA. It’s not so much that the President has acquired powers, as that Congress has given them to him through action or inaction.
But watch the left squeal when a Republican president does the same.
Using SCOTS logic ETA can then regulate water vapor as well as it is a much more prolific GHG. So Scale a reined in the fascists a little and the tailoring rule only applies to sources not otherwise regulated as majors. I guess one man’s compromise is another man’s judicial activism. The real question is what will the Marxist ETA determine is BACK for CO2 control when no industrial/commercial scale capture system has been shown to be technically robust or economically viable???
@ur momisugly David S, re congressional powers to delegate regulatory authority.
This is long, but it is complete. It gives the legal history and cases in support of the delegation authority.
http://law.onecle.com/constitution/article-1/03-delegation-of-legislative-power.html
Carbon capture and sequestration has been demonstrated, proven, and is economical. Naysayers must consider the Skyonic technology, known as Skymine. It captures CO2 from an exhaust stack, then converts it chemically to sodium bicarbonate. The bicarb is then evaporated to a powder and sold. A plant is under construction near San Antonio, Texas, with startup later in 2014. The Skymine plant has a simple payback period of 3 years.
see http://skyonic.com/
Dave Yaussy
Thanks for your legal review:
UNRINGING THE BELL: TIME FOR EPA TO RECONSIDER ITS GREENHOUSE GAS ENDANGERMENT FINDING
The most important issue is the Judiciary/Supreme Court taking the EPA’s judgment and its failure or refusal to hold the EPA accountable on the science of the endangerment finding, especially when the EPA refused to follow its own required policies.
The next issue is “any” endangerment, with no accountability for costs of mitigation vs accommodation. The bald statement by the EPA that there is “endangerment” now means We the People will be coerced to pay whatever politically driven bureaucrats dictate.
The lemmings are driving the law.
That will need to be explicitly redressed by Congress.
albertalad, only in Obama’s wildest dreams could he have the power that a Canadian Prime Minister has. Obama the POTUS has executive power, while a Canadian PM has both executive and legislative power when his/her party has a majority.
The POTUS power is checked by both the Congress and the SCOTUS. Obama is doing enough damage with his executive power, but imagine how bad it could get if the Democrats had both the Senate and the House? That would ruin America.
@Allen – They did for about 40 years – 55-94. But they were not all progressives then
@ur momisugly Chris Magnuson says:
June 23, 2014 at 2:15 pm
Agreed. Read Ian Wishart’s Air Con. He provides names, links, references; he discusses the origins, does a “follow the money”, exposes a great deal of corruption. It’s a tour-de-force, and he updated it once in 2010, following Climategate. I’d like to see him update it annually!
The profiteering by rent-seeking universities/”researchers” looking for grants; by corporations and especially Green NGOs; by politicians—everyone using a good ‘crisis’ that got its start by playing on the gullibility of do-gooders who, innocently enough, wanted to clean up polution—and for anyone who was around in the late- ’60s/early- ’70s, you might recall how bad it was in some places. Not just or even necessarily the air polution, but simply garbage strewn along the highways. Even into the early ’80s, before RCRA, TSCA, and the “Superfund”.
But if you read the post in yet another terrific link provided by @ur momisuglyRoger Sowell, there is room for hope: in modern SCOTUS decisions (if I read it correctly), since the 1930s, it has not happened that SCOTUS went against Congress when they delegated even vaguely-defined legislative powers to the Executive Branch or an agency. Previous calls that did go against such delegations were because they were undefined powers with essentially no limits on the Executive Branch, to which they were delegated.
Significantly, per the article, “Since 1935, the Court has not struck down a delegation to an administrative agency.” Instead, “the Court’s solution has been to reject delegation challenges in all but the most extreme cases, and to accept delegations of vast powers to the President or to administrative agencies”; providing fairly broad, vaguely defined limits: “In determining what [Congress] may do in seeking assistance from another branch, the extent and character of that assistance must be fixed according to common sense and the inherent necessities of the government co-ordination” (J. W. Hampton, Jr. & Co. v. United States, 276 U.S. 394, 406 (1928)). No need to elaborate on the problems inherent involved here; we only have to ask the question, who determines “common sense” or “inherent necessities”?
Against this historical background, and setting aside the distraction of what I believe are completely irrelevant percentages, this new decision seems to be very significant: outside of two decisions in 1935 which were very different from the current case (in one, Congress “left the matter to the President without standard or rule, to be dealt with as he pleased,” and in the other, “authorize[d] the making of codes to prescribe them.” Sort of like, “We have to pass this law so that we can see what’s in it”…. Sorry. Digression…), this is a completely new approach by SCOTUS. I’m no expert, but if the article in Roger’s link is accurate, this decision appears to be the first real limitation that SCOTUS has put on a Congressional delegation of legislative powers in nearly 100 years.
That is a non-trivial event. Again, I think the percentages tossed about are a distraction from the real story, and are receiving too much attention for the little significance they have.
Also again, I’m with Anthony on this one: this is reason for hope.
john says:
June 23, 2014 at 5:43 pm
Here comes the pitch….
You are so correct and its so sad. The lemmings will proudly parrot this throughout the Pravda media sphere. while ignoring all facts, historical promises and details.
That’s the same pitch they gave on everything else…that it will all reduce the prices of everything and created more money. The same used for Sticulus (which failed) the economic reforms (which failed), the Jobs Bills (which failed) and everything else Obama and Krugman have been pushing.
The very same lemmings think higher taxes on small business will create jobs.
think higher taxes on oil companies will lower the price of fuel.
think raising taxes while keeping loopholes will increase revenues.
think higher taxes on fuel will lower the cost of food.
think elimination of proof of identity will reduce voter fraud.
think reducing legal gun ownership will reduce the number of illegal guns.
think raising the cost of healthcare insurance will lower the cost for everyone.
think putting people into homes they cannot afford will grow the middle class.
think Stimulus will create 4 million jobs.
think Obamacare will create 4 million jobs and turn the economy around.
think monitoring your emails, bank and credit cards, twitters, GPS and phone calls will eliminate bad people.
and they also think closing down energy plants will create more reliable, cheaper energy for all.
SCOTUS Blog
Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency
Opinion analysis: EPA mostly wins, but with criticism
This from Forbes:
“The fact that regulating all GHG sources “would place plainly excessive demands on limited governmental resources is alone a good reason for rejecting” the idea, Scalia wrote. More threatening for the EPA was this passage:
‘When an agency claims to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power to regulate “a significant portion of the American economy,” we typically greet its announcement with a measure of skepticism. …We expect Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast “economic and political significance.’ ”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2014/06/23/tread-carefully-with-greenhouse-gas-regs-court-warns-epa/
I think this is reason for optimism down the line.
These Lawyers/Judges should have never ruled CO2 a toxic pollutant. It`s the essence of life.
Pure Idiots or purely political.
The court said any industries currently regulated for other pollutants can be regulated for GHGs. The part that bothers me is they can get away with calling CO2 a pollutant. They say it’s settled law. At some point, I hope regarding this issue the EPA and SCOTUS will be viewed by future generations as being just as shameless and destructive as those running the Salem witch trials. Where is there any limit to where legal precedent can go? Any sufficiently long series of bad decisions in principle could lead to any result imaginable. In the end, only we can impose such limits. If the court says the sky is green would we say no it isn’t green? I think we are there now.
john says: June 23, 2014 at 5:43 pm
Here comes the pitch….
Climate policies could lift global GDP by $2.6 trillion/year – World Bank
(Reuters) – Global economic output could rise by as much as an additional $2.6 trillion a year, or 2.2 percent, by 2030 if government policies improve energy efficiency, waste management and public transport, according to a World Bank report released on Tuesday.
Would that be the same World Bank and IMF that has a 4 step plan for any nation to be taken over and stripped of assets.
Step One is Privatization – Step Two Capital Market Liberalization. – Step Three: Market-Based Pricing w/ Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls, “The IMF riot.” – Step Four of what the IMF and World Bank call their “poverty reduction strategy”.
From an interview and documents of Joseph Stiglitz former Chief Economist of the World Bank.
http://www.gregpalast.com/the-globalizer-who-came-in-from-the-cold/
or search – Greg Palast secret documents IMF’s and World Bank
Roger Sowell says:
June 23, 2014 at 6:28 pm
@ur momisugly David S, re congressional powers to delegate regulatory authority.
This is long, but it is complete. It gives the legal history and cases in support of the delegation authority.
Roger thank you for the info, of which I was not aware. But I stand my ground on this issue. Either we have a Constitution that means something or we don’t. Unfortunately we cannot rely on any of the three branches of government to do their job which is to support the Constitution. All three branches find reasons for exceptions or deviations from the Constitution. As a result we are gradually losing our Constitution and when we lose the Constitution we lose America. Consider what the Constitution does; it defines our government and it protects all of our rights. And look at the recent violations:
-The NSA spys on the emails and phone calls of millions of Americans without a search warrant and without even probable cause to get a warrant,
-The TSA conducts highly invasive searches of millions of American air travelers without a warrant or probable cause to get a warrant.
All of this is in violation of the 4th amendment but is claimed to be justified because of the fear of terrorism. In fact you are a hundred times more likely to die in a car accident than by a terrorist attack in the US. You are also 100 times more likely to kill yourself than to be killed by a terrorist. And you are several hundred times more likely to die from a preventable medical error than from a terrorist.
-The NDAA act of 2012 authorizes the Armed Forces to indefinitely detain, without trial, anyone suspected of involvement with a terrorist organization. That includes American citizens. Doesn’t that violate the 5th and 6th amendments? It precludes the requirement for an indictment by a grand jury, as well as the right to due process of law both of which are required by the 5th amendment. And it certainly by-passes the 6th amendment right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury.
-So there goes the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments. That’s 30% of the Bill of rights lost all because the three branches of government are justifying exceptions to the Constitution.
-Add to that list, the delegation of the legislative authority of Congress, to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. .And that’s only a few examples. At what point do we say America is no longer a free country? Without the constitution America could be just like NAZI Germany or North Korea or any totalitarian society that doesn’t respect human rights. Will we admit we no longer live in a free country when we find ourselves in a concentration camp or when we are facing a firing squad for having committed no crime? Won’t that be a little too late? We should demand strict adherence to the Constitution from all Representatives, Senators, judges and presidents. If we don’t, we will see the Constitution eroded away until there is nothing left of it and we will then find ourselves living in George Orwell’s 1984. I don’t think we’ll like it much.
A big problem here is that both sides of the Supreme Court, Democratic and Republican, are climate change imbeciles. ALL the justices accept the argument that human activity alone is causing the planet to heat up. They all believe climate change, whatever the heck the term means, is bad and must be stopped. Heck, think about what they call “settled law.” And lastly, don’t forget the Massachusetts decision, in which the court found that CO2 was a poison. So, if and when the SC comes out on the correct side in some future EPA case, it will be completely by accident. They don’t have a clue. Also, if I understand this convoluted decision, the court stopped the EPA from regulating supermarkets and hamburger joints they way it regulates energy plants. IOW, the EPA was given FULL clearance to continue its attack on the coal industry.
I’m not sure why it is so difficult for so many to continually misunderstand what is going on here.
In passing the Clean Air Act, Congress expressed its intent to reduce pollutants in our air and directed the newly-formed EPA to write detailed regulations to accomplish its purpose. Unfortunately, Congress was inconsistent in its use of the term ‘pollutant’ in the initial legislation, and despite several major re-writes of the law, Congress has not cured this inconsistency.
EPA has written many thousands of pages of regulations to limit specific pollutants, notably the six ‘criteria pollutants’ – lead, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, ozone, and particulate matter. Among these are requirements that businesses use control technologies to limit the emission of these criteria pollutants in new and existing processes.
Carbon dioxide was not considered a pollutant when Congress passed the Clean Air Act nor was it when most EPA regulations were promulgated. It only became a pollutant when EPA submitted its ‘Endangerment Finding’ which alleged that human health and safety were being threatened by emissions of greenhouse gases, a finding that the courts have (so far) supported by their rulings.
Given the Endangerment Finding, EPA took it upon itself to develop new regulations for carbon dioxide releases which would be similar to those for the six criteria pollutants. Unfortunately, nearly every human, commercial, industrial, and governmental process emits CO2. The EPA tried to take a short cut (thus limiting the burden on itself and the crushing burden on the U.S. economy) by setting a threshold level for CO2 emissions and requiring action only on those processes that exceeded that threshold.
In the very carefully written Supreme Court ruling this week, Justice Scalia demolished the EPA’s arbitrary creation of this threshold level for regulation; as Congress had not authorized the threshold, he stated that the EPA had no right to impose it. However, Congress HAD authorized EPA to write rules to limit pollutants in general, and since greenhouse gases are now considered pollutants, Scalia reasoned that EPA had authority to take action. His solution to the massive burden that this would impose on society and the EPA was clever – businesses not already subject to EPA regulation (mostly rules written to limit criteria pollutants) would not be forced to comply with greenhouse gas limitations; businesses already burdened with compliance obligations for criteria pollutants would also have to install control technologies to limit CO2.
The important thing here is that Justice Scalia maintained his legendary deference to Congress in this ruling. If Congress is unhappy with the implications of laws it has passed, then Congress needs to pass new laws. If they don’t want the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, pass a law that prohibits EPA from doing so.
A couple of posters on this thread blame the GOP-led House for the current situation. I don’t agree. With the other party in control of the Senate and White House, there is little that the House could have done. Perhaps it might be more interesting to ask why the EPA’s role wasn’t clarified/limited when the GOP had control of the House, Senate, and Presidency from 2002 to 2006.
But, at that time, the EPA WAS run by “honest” (or at least “not-deliberately destructive”) bureaucrats and administration-selected senior policy-makers who were NOT deliberately destructive to the national and Internationale economies in a “war against energy” to deliberately destroy people and kill innocents abroad in their search for a new “Gaea on earth” free from all but their self-selected-humans. (I’d say “heaven on earth” but these people are also on a self-declared war against religion, and their crusade (oops, there’s that religion-thingy again) prevents all logic and reason by their hatred for western economies and efficiencies.)
Editorial in 6/24/2014 WSJ: A Constitutional Tutorial for Obama
That “best available control technology” phrase will be the focus of technology for carbon capture. All the pilot and demonstration capture projects the EPA cites are behind schedule and way over budget.
What is the EPA Hiding from the Public?
Rep. Lamar Smith (TX), WSJ Opinion 6/24/2014
Which further underscores the subterfuge of the term “carbon pollution.” Only by calling CO2 a pollutant can they cover it under the Clean Air Act. But there is no way they can show benefits of reduced CO2 “pollution” remotely approaching the costs of curtailment. So they must mix it in with other pollutants that they already regulate under CAA.
35 years ago the Clean Air Act was about stopping people from ADDING 330,000 ppb of lead to gasoline. Today’s EPA regs are about REDUCING 48 ppb to 4 ppb of mercury naturally occurring in coal. That’s five orders of magnitude. The FDA says 1000 ppb of mercury in fish is safe to eat. 2 ppb mercury in water is safe to drink. The EPA, without legislative approval, wants society to incur astronomical costs, and who knows what unintended consequences, to clean coal to a level where it is almost safe to drink before we burn it. I think the subject mercury regs are idiotic, supported by pseudoscience, improper statistical and fincancial models, sourced from religious fanatics, and available for review only by those faithful to the catechism and scripture.
Many liberal bloggers – and even the EPA itself – have called this a victory for the carbon emissions standards the EPA has proposed earlier this month.
If it’s such a victory, why have the three major TV news networks ignored this Supreme Court ruling?
Really – I’m disgusted at the headlines that say Obama’s carbon plans were limited. He got by unscaythed. Hopefully, Congress will take CO2 from the purview of the EPA. Maybe the new Congress after 11/2014.
Roger Sowell,
Pardon me, but you have your cranium so far inserted into your cloacal cavity as to beg the question as to whether you any longer sentient. From your post, I adduce you are not.
stas peterson says:
June 26, 2014 at 7:38 pm
You mean raise the question, but as to your main point, affirmativo!
Sorry, but a pet peeve of mine. Begging the question is the name of a logical fallacy, which essentially is assuming what you intend to demonstrate. It doesn’t mean the same as raising a question.
Data that is not of national security interest, funded by taxpayer monies such as that produced for the EPA, and other government agencies, should be available in unaltered form to any taxpayer, and at no cost.