SCOTUS stalls Obama climate crusade… for now

The court dealt a serious blow to the Obama administration’s climate change agenda on Tuesday when it took the unusual step of delaying implementation of the Clean Power Plan until legal challenges to the regulation are completed.

Additionally, the plan was created to reduce the carbon emissions from us power plants by 2030 to 32 per cent below 2005 levels. In that case, the MATS regulations were issued in 2012 and the Supreme Court didn’t overturn them until 2015 – and by that time the damage had already been done.

On Oct. 23, 26 states filed legal challenges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia challenging the final rule for existing power plants. The forces fighting President Obama’s common sense plan are those with a stake in the dirty energy status quo that is of polluting our air, water, and forests and contributing to global climate change. But a decision could be long in coming, particularly if the case winds up in the Supreme Court – meaning that the rules’ fate might not be determined before a new presidential administration comes into power in 2017. The court is scheduled to hear arguments in June, while the states are supposed to have their implementation plans to the EPA by September. They sold it as “flexible” – framing it as though states could set their own roadmaps in order to meet the requirements of the Clean Power Plan.

In a statement, Palmer said: “Implementing the Clean Power Plan would have far reaching impacts and profoundly negative consequences for American families and the economy …”

But the Supreme Court’s stay has shaken and startled many administration officials and environmental activists, because it is so rare for the high court to intervene at this stage of litigation.

Although the CPP is stalled, the EPA says regulating carbon dioxide through the Clean Air Act will stand up to court scrutiny. “And we know that five justices agree with that”. It gives state governments a deadline of summer 2016 to submit plans to the EPA for how they will comply with the rule or to request a one- or two-year extension.

Atlanta-based Georgia Power, which operates 5 coal-fired plants, applauded the delay as “the right decision for customers and the states unduly tasked with achieving EPA’s overreaching mandates”, spokesman Jacob Hawkins said.