climate change

The U.S. Supreme Court will wrap up its term a week from today, and there are several major cases left to be decided, USA Today reports. A couple highlights of issues to be decided: 

One, what is the scope of the presidential power to make appointments when the Senate is in recess?

Two, can the Environmental Protection Agency change the threshold for greenhouse gas emissions?

Three, can shareholders alleging securities fraud rely on the assumption that stock price reflects all available information instead of having to prove specifically that fraud affected stock prices? 

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a draft rule to regulate the carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants, the Wall Street Journal reports. The mandate would require plants to cut their emissions by 30 percent by 2030. EPA is taking comment on the measure as well as another measure that would result in an estimated reduction of carbon emissions by 24 percent in 2025.

The National Law Journal's Tony Mauro reports that the U.S. Supreme Court appears to be "mostly sympathetic" to the Environmental Protection Agency's climate-change regulation: "Any hope among industry advocates that the U.S. Supreme Court might ban Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases altogether went up in smoke, so to speak, during more than 90 minutes of spirited argument last week. For one thing, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony Kennedy both suggested the court has some obligation not to ignore the court's 2007 precedent Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency. That decision said the EPA did have authority to regulate greenhouse gases emitted by motor vehicles. For another, even Peter Keisler, the lawyer for five sets of private challengers to EPA regulation, acknowledged during the argument Feb. 24 that the EPA's mandate extended to stationary sources under other parts of the Clean Air Act — just not the part at issue in the case being argued."

SCOTUSBlog's Lyle Denniston reports that a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court appears to favor the Environmental Protection Agency's position in favor of climate-change regulation in the six cases the court heard today: "As is so often the case when the Court is closely divided, the vote of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy loomed as the critical one, and that vote seemed inclined toward the EPA, though with some doubt.   Although he seemed troubled that Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., could call up no prior ruling to support the policy choice the EPA had made on greenhouse gases by industrial plants, Kennedy left the impression that it might not matter."

The EPA's opponents argue that the agency has stretched the Clean Air Act out of shape, Denniston reports.

One of the issues taken up by the court is whether the EPA "'permissibly determined that its regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles triggered permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act for stationary sources that emit greenhouses gases.'” 

The New York Times' Adam Liptak writes that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday on the ability for President Obama's administration to take executive-only action on climate change. The justices will decide if the executive branch went too far in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources like power plants. The issue taken up by the court, Liptak reports, is whether the Environmental Protection Agency "'permissibly determined that its regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles triggered permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act for stationary sources that emit greenhouses gases.'” 

Grist, an online environmental magazine, speculates whether the 90 companies that have been identified as causing two-thirds of human-driven global warming emissions could be sued under tort law. Environmental law experts told Grist that such lawsuits would fail in federal court. The U.S. Supreme Court found in American Elecctric Power v. Connecticut that states can't sue companies for emitting greenhouse gases. Only the Environmental Protection Agency can regulate interstate CO2 pollution because the federal Clean Air Act displaces federal common law, Grist reports. State lawsuits wouldn't be pre-empted, but it would require proving specific causation, Grist reports: "Let’s say your house was damaged by a hurricane. You would have to convince a judge and jury that the specific hurricane was caused by climate change. Just because climate change makes storms stronger and more frequent doesn’t mean you can blame oil companies for any given storm in a court of law."

The New York Times reports that the most recent United Nations talks on climate change made some progress: "Delegates agreed to the broad outlines of a proposed system for pledging emissions cuts and gave their support for a new treaty mechanism to tackle the human cost of rising seas, floods, stronger storms and other expected effects of global warming." However, while these climate-change negotiations weren't a Copenhagen fiasco, "treaty members remain far from any serious, concerted action to cut emissions. And developing nations complained that promises of financial help remain unmet," The Times also reports.

Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, might have broken into tears because the lack of a global agreement on climate change is "condemning future generations before they are even born," BBC reported. But Figueres still said that a deal can be done by 2015 and the pitfalls that doomed the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations for an international climate-change accord could be avoided, BBC also reported.

The Environmental Protection Agency is going to announce the full details of its plan today to start regulating the amount of carbon emissions new coal and gas power plants can emit. Court challenges by the energy industry are predicted, the Washington Post reports.