Surprise Supreme Court Ruling May Send Obama's Climate Plan Up in Smoke (mic.com)
By Tom McKay February 10, 2016
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court halted President Obama's Clean Power Plan from going into effect while a lawsuit from 29 states makes its way through the courts. It was an unexpected setback for the White House, which passed the plan in August and lobbied for emissions quotas in the Paris climate talks in December.
In a strict 5-4 party line vote, the Hill reported, the conservative wing of the court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency could not enforce the new rules set in the plan until the legal challenges are resolved.
According to the Economist, the plan "gives orders to each state that, when considered together, should amount to removing 870m tons of CO2 from emissions by power stations by 2030 (as measured against 2005 levels) ... [each state] is required to submit plans by 2018 and to show some progress on them by 2022."
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Those goals are crucial toward meeting the United States' promised emission cuts in the Paris climate deal and would be a massive blow to the coal industry. The states in the lawsuit argue the new EPA rules are unconstitutionally restrictive. For its part, the EPA has won important recent legal battles to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant and regulate pollution that crosses state lines.
"We are thrilled that the Supreme Court realized the rule's immediate impact and froze its implementation," Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said, according to the Economist. An EPA spokesman said "We're disappointed the rule has been stayed. Millions of people are demanding we confront the risks posed by climate change."
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