After revoking the right to abortion and the right to carry a weapon outside the home, the very conservative Supreme Court of the United States on Thursday limited the means of the federal State to fight against greenhouse gases. greenhouse, a decision that could have a heavy impact on global warming. A “devastating” decision, according to the White House.
Its six conservative judges ruled, against the advice of their three progressive colleagues, that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could not enact general rules to regulate emissions from coal-fired power plants, which produce nearly 20% of electricity in the United States.
The six warmest years recorded in the decade
“Putting a limit on carbon dioxide emissions at a level that would require a nationwide move away from coal to generate electricity could be a relevant solution to today’s crisis. But it is implausible that Congress gave the EPA the authority to pass such a measure,” wrote Judge John Roberts in the ruling.
Reflecting the divisions of American society on environmental issues, the decision was immediately welcomed by the Republican Party, hostile to any federal regulation and defender of fossil fuels. “Today, the Supreme Court is giving power back to the people,” said its leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, criticizing Democratic President Joe Biden “for waging a war against affordable energy” despite inflation.
“Today, the Court stripped the Environmental Protection Agency of the authority Congress gave it to respond to the most pressing issue of our time “, denounces in a separate argument the magistrate Elena Kagan on behalf of the progressives, recalling that the six hottest years have been recorded during the last decade.
Appalled, environmental defense organizations highlighted the gap with the rest of the world. “The decision threatens the United States to be relegated far behind our international partners who are accelerating efforts to meet their climate commitments,” said Nathaniel Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
“Catastrophic”, judges Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
The judgment was immediately welcomed by several Republican governors behind the legal proceedings, but deemed “catastrophic” by the elected Democrat of the House of Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Our planet is on fire and this extremist Supreme Court is destroying the ability of the federal power to fight,” added Senator Elizabeth Warren. After the abortion flip-flop last week, he represents yet another change of footing at the Supreme Court.
In 2007, it had decided by a narrow majority that the EPA was competent to regulate the emissions of gases responsible for global warming, in the same way that it is charged by a law of the 1960s with limiting air pollution.
But since then, former Republican President Donald Trump, a climatosceptic hostile to any binding measure for the industry, has brought three magistrates into the temple of American law, cementing his conservative majority (six judges out of nine).
The file finds its source in an ambitious plan adopted in 2015 by Barack Obama to reduce CO2 emissions. This “Clean Power Plan” had been blocked before coming into force.
In 2019, Donald Trump published his own “Affordable Clean Energy Rule”, limiting the scope of the EPA’s action within each electricity production site, without authorizing it to remodel the entire network. A federal court having invalidated this draft, several conservative states and the coal industry asked the Supreme Court to intervene and clarify the powers of the EPA.
The government of Democrat Joe Biden had let it be known that it did not intend to resuscitate Barack Obama’s plan and had asked the High Court to declare the file obsolete to avoid a decision with harmful consequences. His bet failed.