SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Carbon Emissions The EPA And The Supreme Court

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The word “resilience” is a word being used and acted upon in Suffolk—indeed all over the United States—these days to try to deal with results of climate change: for us a rising Atlantic Ocean.

But unless the cause of the problem—primarily the burning of fossil fuels warming the atmosphere causing climate change—is fully challenged and dealt with, efforts at seeking to react to the effect, resilience, will not work in the long run or even the medium run.  

The recent 6-to-3 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in the West Virginia v. EPA case that will limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate carbon emissions from power plants substantially weakens dealing with the main cause.

And environmentalists here—and across the nation—have good reason to be highly disapproving.

The EPA has been tackling carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. 

Notes Kevin McAllister, founder and president of Suffolk-based Defend H20—which has a major focus on the impacts of climate change on our shorelines, “the effectiveness of the Clean Air Act is because the EPA has had the regulatory authority to impose tough restrictions on carbon emissions.”

“The Supreme Court ruling limiting EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases from power plant plants is a setback with protecting air quality and mitigating climate change,” says McAllister.

“Subordinating science-based climate policy to a gridlocked Congress will surely stall momentum on climate action.” McAllister told me last week.

This, he stated will be reflected “in terms of reducing emissions from a major source of greenhouse gases—power plants—and a dampened enthusiasm of the international community watching the United States back off its commitment to slash CO2 emissions.”

As Coral Davenport, who covers energy and environmental policy for the climate desk of The New York Times, wrote the day after the Supreme Court ruling, “The Clean Air Act, which some legal experts call the most powerful environmental law in the world, was enacted in 1970, at the birth of the environmental movement.”

“Since then, it has been the source of scores of landmark regulations on air pollution, including soot, smog, mercury, and the toxic chemicals that cause acid rain,” she noted. The ruling by the six-member arch-conservative majority on the Supreme Court “is part of a larger legal fight over whether and how far the Clean Air Act can be used to combat climate change. The outcome could handcuff President Biden’s plans to lower the United States’ planet-warming pollution.”

The vote in 1970 in the U.S. Senate for the Clean Air Act was 73-0. The House of Representatives earlier passed its version 374-1. The final bill was signed by President Nixon. 

“As we sign this bill in this room,” Nixon said, “we can look back and say, in the Roosevelt Room…we signed a historic piece of legislation that puts us far down the road toward a goal that Theodore Roosevelt, 70 years ago, spoke eloquently about: a goal of clean air, clean water, and open spaces for the future generations of America.”

The Roosevelt link has special meaning to we on Long Island considering TR’s residence in Sagamore Hill on Long Island from 1885 until his death in 1919.

Bob DeLuca, president of the Suffolk-based Group for the East End, said the ruling “flies in the face of sound science and effective environmental policy. The decision essentially ties the EPA’s hands from developing a nationwide regulatory strategy for carbon emissions on a theory that Congress could not have intended to empower the EPA to address matters of substantial national consequence without further action by Congress. By arguing that Congress could have never intended the EPA to actually do its job comprehensively—an odd view given the existence of a national Clean Air Act—the court significantly diminished the authority of the EPA when it comes to one of the most consequential environmental issues of our time,” he said. 

“Moreover, by dropping the matter back in the lap of a Congress mired in conflict and endless stalemates over substantive legislation, the court assured its decision would hold indefinitely,” he continued. “These are very smart people and they surely knew what the outcome would be.”

“For those of us in the conservation community and I assume many concerned citizens in general, the weakening of government’s authority to address climate change comprehensively is a blow to important progress that needs to be made immediately, and places substantial new pressure on state and local governments to fill the void,” DeLuca told me. 

In the current issue of The New Yorker, Jeannie Suk Gersen pointed to former President Trump, whose three appointments of Supreme Court justices turned the court radically conservative. She wrote “in addition to an attempted coup, we have him to thank for 2022’s becoming the turning point of the Supreme Court’s conservative revolution. In a single week in late June, the conservative justices asserted their recently consolidated power by expanding gun rights, demolishing the right to abortion, blowing a hole in the wall between the church and state and curtailing the ability to combat climate change.” (Through his candidacy and presidency, Trump routinely dismissed climate change as a “hoax.”)

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.