The six conservative judges estimated that the Environmental Protection Agency could not enact general rules to regulate the emissions of coal -fired power plants.
Le Monde
New foot change of the Supreme Court of the United States. The highest judicial body of the country rendered, Thursday, June 30, a decision which limits the means of the federal state to combat greenhouse gases.
His six conservative judges estimated, against the advice of their three progressive colleagues, that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could not enact general rules to regulate the emissions of coal -fired power plants, which produce almost 20 % of electricity in the United States.
“Put a limit to carbon dioxide emissions to a level that would require renouncing coal national to produce electricity could be a relevant solution to the crisis of today. But it is not plausible that Congress has given the authority to adopt such a measure, “writes judge John Roberts in this decision.
“Today, the Court has withdrawn from the environmental protection agency the power that Congress gave it to respond to the” most pressing problem of our time “” denounced the magistrate Elena Kagan , in a distinct argument written in the name of progressives. She recalls in particular that the hottest years have been recorded in the past decade.
The decision, which could have a heavy impact on global warming, was immediately praised by several republican governors at the origin of the legal proceedings. On the other hand, it was deemed “catastrophic” by the elected Democrat of the House of Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
jurisprudence
The file on which the Court ruled Thursday finds its source in an ambitious plan adopted in 2015 by Barack Obama to reduce CO 2 emissions. This “Clean Power Plan”, whose implementation returned to EPA, had been blocked before entering into force. In 2019, Donald Trump had published his own “rule for an affordable clean energy”, limiting the EPA field of action within each electricity production site, without authorizing it to reshape the whole network.
A federal court having invalidated this version, several conservative states and the coal industry asked the Supreme Court to intervene and specify the powers of the EPA. The government of the Democrat Joe Biden had said that he did not intend to resuscitate the plan of Barack Obama and had asked the High Court to declare the Caduc file.
After the flip-flop on abortion last week, this decision is a new reversal of jurisprudence. In 2007, the Supreme Court had decided for a short majority that the EPA was competent to regulate gas emissions responsible for global warming, as well as it is responsible for limiting air pollution by law of years 1960. Since then, former republican president Donald Trump, climatosceptic and hostile to any binding measure for industry, has brought three magistrates into the temple of American law, thus cementing his conservative majority.