Obstructive U.S. Supreme Court Blocks Global Warming Initiative

February 10, 2016 – The conservative wing of the American Supreme Court is not interested in combating climate change. Instead 5 justices have buried their heads in the sand in the name of non-science and nonsense. The case in point, the executive order implemented by President Obama to regulate coal-fired power plant emissions.

You would think judicial would equate with intelligent, but apparently in today’s America, being a Supreme doesn’t. Instead, despite the American pledges at COP21 to help the world combat climate change, we have a court decision that believes policy focused on reducing carbon emissions runs counter to the civil liberties of utility companies spewing carbon dioxide into the air megatons at a time.

The court supposedly ruled against the emission regulation to save jobs. What jobs are these? Coal miners in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and other states, and coal-fired power plant operators who already know that the writing is on the wall for them if the world is to keep global atmospheric temperatures from rising 1.5 to 2 Celsius (2.7 to 3.6 Fahrenheit) degrees.

The Environmental Protection Agency in the United States last year issued regulations requiring power plants to reduce emissions by one-third by 2030 based on 2005 as the baseline. This was seen globally as a major step for the world in fighting climate change since the United States is the second largest greenhouse gas polluter on the planet. The states and their power companies were to submit compliance plans as of September 2016 although they were given the right to extend this by two years. Rather than do that 29 filed a challenge, joined by power companies and a number of industry partners. Now the regulation is temporarily put on hold while the Supreme Court has ruled it will hear arguments on June 2nd, 2016. Interestingly 18 American states oppose the Supreme Court’s decision because they are, in their own words are “continuing to experience climate-change harms firsthand, including increased flooding, more severe storms, wildfires and droughts….lasting and irreversible.” For these states, “any stay that results in further delay in emissions reductions would compound the harms.”

Maybe these are the states that don’t vote Republican or align with the conservatives sitting on America’s highest bench. That America doesn’t seem to matter too much to these troglodytes.