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Wednesday, October 4, 2023

SCOTUS Has Already Ruled Against EPA's "Authority" to Regulate Carbon Emissions

The Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2022 limits the scope of the agency’s regulatory powers with broader implications for all federal rulemaking on climate. 

In my recent post called Green New Deal Was Always a Bolshevik Power Grab: Now EV Mandates, Hostility to Nuclear, Fossil Fuels and Food Production. But Wait, There's More!, (from Apr 20, 2023), I said that the Supreme Court in 2022 indeed ruled that the EPA needed explicit legislative authority to regulate carbon. From the Devoise lawfirm:

“The Supreme Court decided West Virginia v. EPA by a vote of 6-3 on the basis of the major questions doctrine. In a majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court held that the EPA exceeded its authority in proposing the Clean Power Plan’s emissions reduction system. The major questions doctrine, as described by the majority, “refers to an identifiable body of law that has developed over a series of significant cases all addressing a particular and recurring problem: agencies asserting highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.” The Court determined that the doctrine requires clear congressional authorization in order for a court to uphold agency actions in extraordinary cases where the agency’s action is of “economic or political significance” or broadly regulates a “fundamental sector of the economy.”

Expect the Biden Bolsheviks to ignore this ruling. Nothing can stop these power-drunk fools and idiots. It’s part of a larger power grab to subvert your freedoms, increase strong-armed enforcement actions in many areas and take over the economy through higher spending to control all aspects of your life.

The ruling was a historic defeat for the Environmental Protection Agency. Not only did the Court rule that the 2015 Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s signature climate regulation, was unconstitutional; it also dramatically limited EPA’s power to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA) moving forward.  

The REAL problem is that NO ONE WAS ALLOWED TO VOTE ON THIS CRAP.

Regarding WV v. EPA, from Wiki:

In June 2014, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed The Clean Power Plan (CPP) as an Obama administration rule. The rules aimed to tackle climate change by requiring reductions of carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation by 32% of recorded 2005 levels by 2030, with the implementation to be set by the states, under the authority granted by the Clean Air Act, § 7411(d). States would have been required to submit implementation plans by 2018 with enforcement to start by 2022.

Back in 2012 (!), I wrote in my post EPA Carbon Regulation Power Grab that regulating CO2 is patently illegal. It took until 2022 for the SCOTUS to somewhat agree. Their latest ruling

The most egregious power grab is where the EPA has decided to regulate carbon dioxide.  They do so under the guise that carbon dioxide is "harmful or threatening to human health"--which is patently false. 

Unlike other gases such as sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide is naturally occuring, historically running at about 0.030% or 300 ppm.  Plants REQUIRE IT for their photosynthesis and the level has only risen only to an less-than-astounding 0.038% (that's 380 ppm or a "trace gas"). (Interestingly, an atmospheric level below 170 ppm would kill all photosynthesis in the world and all life on earth would vanish.) 

To call such levels harmful to human or public health is a vast overstretch that must be reversed. 
Conversely, you can see why sulfur dioxide is appropriately regulated. Other than volcanic eruptions, is not a naturally occuring atmospheric pollutant.  Mostly through burning of coal, man emits sulfur dioxide and, if not regulated and reduced, has shown to cause acid rain, deforestation and harm to human respiration.  It is an irritant to human respiration. Carbon dioxide at 400ppm, is not an irritant to human respiration. To this day, sulfur dioxide emissions are reduced and that's largely a good and desireable thing for the public and environment.

The EPA will continue it's self-aggrandisement unless this regulatory mandate is overturned.  They will inject themselves further into the business community and hurt the economy.  Already this administration is cancelling coal burning power plants and removing permits for existing plants under this regulation.   You think that this won't eventually hurt the economy?   I guarantee that we need more energy, not less.

The Obama administration is generally hostile to conventional hydrocarbon energy---which will remain our predominant source of energy for the next century.   So, to curtail conventional energy supplies means higher costs now and in the future. Obama is actually of in favor of raising conventional energy costs so that it makes his favored alternatives more attractive. And it's working!  What he doesn't understand is that he hurts moms, pops, poor people, and retirees with such policies and hurts economic activity and wealth creation. It's an extremely untimely philosophy.  

All of these rabid central planners are fools. All these initiatives should have been voted upon in some kind of national referendum (like Switzerland).  These SAME central planners are partly to blame for sending our industrial and manufacturing base to CHYNA.  So, all emissions are down in the US and Europe, but these emissions didn't fall, they were simply transferred to China. Now China has more CO2 emissions than the REST OF THE DEVELOPED WORLD COMBINED:

China Emits More Greenhouse Gas Than the Entire Developed World Combined

China will not commit economic suicide by regulating carbon. PERIOD.  India won't either.

The Biden and Obama Bolsheviks, Climate Power Grabbers, Green New Scammers have ignored this ruling as I predicted above and ignored the "inconvenient FACTS" that I enumerated above.  In fact, even after the SCOTUS ruling, they are going full blast down their absurd ways of hyper-regulating our country into economic oblivion.

Perhaps, Trump's  Conservative court will again remind our illegitimate Bolsheviks in the administration and EPA to CEASE and DESIST. Lord knows that nothing else will stop this nonsense--except possibly national bankruptcy and debt default?  ALL OF THESE SCOUNDRELS NEED TO BE RUN OUT OF TOWN ON A RAIL AFTER BEING 'TARRED AND FEATHERED."

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