Opinion: The Supreme Court dealt a huge blow to our ability to fight climate change

CNN ^ | June 29, 2024 | Adam H. Sobel

[where's_the_Outrage?]

The Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to discard the 40-year-old precedent established by Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council is a truly harsh blow against environmental protection and climate justice. By overruling the Chevron doctrine that required courts to defer to federal agencies when it came to implementing broadly written laws, the Supreme Court will make it much more difficult for the federal government to regulate pollution — including, but by no means limited to greenhouse gas emissions — among many other issues related to health, labor, consumer welfare, taxation, and on and on.

I am profoundly upset at the damage that this decision will almost certainly inflict on our environment and the fight against climate change. But more philosophically, this decision is also upsetting because it represents a demotion of science and expertise in government.

In the federal government, agencies are where detailed knowledge about specific, complex issues reside; in a healthy society, they would have some authority to manage those issues. In other words, the agencies are the ones that know stuff, and if government is to be effective, they should be able to do stuff.......

My colleague at Columbia, Gil Eyal, draws on a range of examples in his book, “The Crisis of Expertise,” to show how neither expert knowledge nor electoral politics on its own can reliably deliver public trust, or solve complex problems like climate change that have both scientific and political dimensions. Slogans like “listen to the science” gloss over this complexity. So one can’t simply say as a matter of principle that the experts in agencies should have some specific amount of power and no less. But they need to have some power; experts and elected officials need to collaborate for the system to work in the public interest.

[Shady]

Maybe they can use their cumulative baited breath to extinguish the volcanic activity in the Pacific ring of fire? LOL!
These people are evil, we must push back against this crap.

[Shady]

And what the heck is “Climate Justice” anyway?
Oh, More money for the “Just Us.”

[JennysCool]

It’s time to close up shop at the EPA, and all other federal agencies created during the late ‘60s and ‘70s in large part to placate rioting hippies.

Time moves on everywhere but Washington, DC.

[BobL]

“It’s time to close up shop at the EPA, and all other federal agencies created during the late ‘60s and ‘70s in large part to placate rioting hippies.”

I’ll support that on ONE CONDITION - that they first push through a requirement that all leafblowers must have damn-good MUFFLERS on them. Then yes, send their workers off to Red States and make them suffer there.

[Candor7]

The Supreme Court dealt a huge blow to our ability to fight climate change>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

No, the Supreme Court preserved individual freedoms in the face of government creating purp[oseful panic in the popu;ation NOT BASED ON SCIENCE.

Climate always changes. Humans adapt, like we always have...without government plaguing us .

The climate change indoctrination has to stop.

[yukong]

If you will reread my post you will see that I said in the past few years Chevron has not been cited or used as a basis for decisions. Courts have quietly stopped relying on it to uphold administrative rules. I work in the administrative law field, and not once in our state has a court used Chevron as the basis for uphold an administrative rule in the past 10 years or so. Before about 2015, yes, but not in recent years. It had already fallen out of favor in most jurisdictions. The fear mongering by the left and the media is most hyperbole. Just like “The biggest threat to democracy is Donald Trump.” Don’t believe all the hype from the left and the media. I mean, for years you could find similar articles about how the Russian Collusion story was real, or January 6 was worse than Pearl Harbor. The Chevron decision was effectively dead years again still on the books as it were. But not used as the basis of upholding rules. So…it’s overturning will not significantly reduce the amount of rules coming out of government agencies. It just won’t. You think this will stop the power grabs? It won’t.

[cuban leaf]

Let us be clear: Greenhouse gas emissions are not pollution. And regarding CO2 specifically, all human activity produces it. Even sitting in a chair or walking.

i.e. this whole “climate change” nonsense is an attempt to give the government the power to regulate and control ALL human activity. Thank God it got slowed down.

[rfp1234]

The “experts” who will be fired from abolished agencies will just become “expert staffers” to members of Congress. The science will still be largely phony, but at least there will be some accountability.