News

Sorry, Congress: Obama Can Regulate Emissions

by L. Turner

In a win for haters of global warming everywhere, on Monday the Supreme Court ruled Obama and the EPA can regulate emissions. That means President Obama's plan to target the coal industry, which is responsible for most of the greenhouse-gas emitting from power plants, can go ahead. The plan has faced opposition from the powerful coal lobby and Republican opponents of Obama, who say he's unfairly using his executive power to push through agendas that Congress should set.

Obama's response to that? Congress can't get anything done. The data (and Americans) kinda back him up on that, though many would extend the criticism to Obama himself.

As the Court ruled Monday, it's well within the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the environment. In fact, it's the agency's responsibility to do so. Even Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the bench's most conservative judges, said from the court that the EPA was basically winning in the case, according to The New York Times.

EPA is getting almost everything it wanted in this case. It sought to regulate sources it said were responsible for 86 percent of all the greenhouse gases emitted from stationary sources nationwide. Under our holdings, EPA will be able to regulate sources responsible for 83 percent of those emissions.
Alex Wong/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Obama, through the EPA's proposed rule, would force states to cut fossil fuel emissions at power plants by up to 30 percent by 2030, which is awesome because we're basically headed toward total environmental collapse at the moment.

But not-so-surprisingly, Republicans aren't into it. In a recent GOP address given by Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi, Obama was accused of unfairly wielding his executive power to make the change — among other things.

The Administration has set out to kill coal and its 800,000 jobs. If it succeeds in death by regulation, we’ll all be paying a lot more money for electricity – if we can get it. Our pocketbook will be lighter, but our country will be darker. ... Students, recent graduates and all of us don’t have to let ourselves be ruled by executive orders without basis in law, for agency mandates that cost without benefit and policies where only the federal government is smart enough to make your decisions.
Alex Wong/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Meanwhile, the White House's lawyer, John Podesta, had already predicted that the rule would survive scrutiny and lawsuits brought by challengers, according to Politico. He also told politicians denying climate change to get a new talking point.

We think that people who deny the existence of climate change, who want to try to run suggesting that they really aren’t scientists, and they don’t really get it and they can’t really see what’s going on around them, and they want to deny the public health effects that pollution is having on our families … I think that’s the losing side of the argument.