No it isn’t. The Clean Air Act is all about requiring polluters to use control technology, and requiring new sources to use better and more expensive control technology than existing sources. That’s the program Congress designed.
Restructuring the energy industry to address climate is a different solution to a different problem, related only by the commonality of emissions into air. It’s like using drug laws to regulate processed foods because both involve harm caused by ingesting things.
Yes, you're right. I was initially thinking this came down to an intelligible clause similar to how people argue OSHA is unconstitutional due to competiting intelligible clauses. My failure was thinking new and existing pollutants needed to have the same solution, and the constraints for arriving to the correct solution were in competition.
Upon further review: a reading of the SCOTUS pdf combined with the referenced laws, I do now believe this was a bad conclusion.
Major questions doctrine seems unbased in an measurable way. Instead, the court should have ruled that the EPA currently had the authority to do this as it was clearly granted in law, and if Congress wanted to limit it, then they would need to do so legislatively. Not the current decision which says that Congress probably didn't mean what they wrote into law because they dun deligated a lot of power.
Edit: someone else wrote this, which does make sense if their supposition is. Regardless, I'll need to read more of the laws beyond 111d.
> No it isn’t. The Clean Air Act is all about requiring polluters to use control technology, and requiring new sources to use better and more expensive control technology than existing sources. That’s the program Congress designed.
Restructuring the energy industry to address climate is a different solution to a different problem, related only by the commonality of emissions into air. It’s like using drug laws to regulate processed foods because both involve harm caused by ingesting things.
This ruling has nothing to do with whether CO2 is a “pollutant.”
Congress cannot delegate a sector to an agency, because agencies are executive branch entities and the executive branch can’t make laws. Executive branch agencies operate under the fiction that they are merely enforcing laws Congress has created. That’s why Congress can’t delegate agencies the power to make rules with the force of law in an entire sector. It has to be more specific, so that the agency is simply “filling in the details.”
And the Clean Air Act is specific. It allows the EPA to fill in the details about pollutants and emissions levels. But it doesn’t give the EPA blanket authority to do whatever is necessary to achieve those targets. It has a detailed menu of measures, such as requiring particular types of emissions control technology on individual plants.
In this case the EPA told the entire energy sector to switch away from coal to renewables. That wasn’t on the list of measures available under the Clean Air Act.
>The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate air pollutants when the agency’s administrator finds that they “cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”
The question is not whether it is a good idea for greenhouse gases to be regulated. The question is if the Clean Air Act mandates it. IANAL, but from what is quoted, I would have a hard time classifying CO2 (which already makes up 0.04% of air) which you exhale every time you breath as an air pollutant. There is no evidence that breathing air with CO2 (at the levels that current industrialization produces) produces harmful effects directly. In fact, if you hold your breath and exhale, the air you exhale likely has a higher local CO2 percentage than the increased levels caused by industrialization. The effects are mediated by its greenhouse effect and global warming. This is analogous to the CFC and the ozone depletion. The CFC's were pretty innocuous at ground level, but their release cause ozone depletion. This was regulated not through the Clean Air Act, but by the Senate ratified Montreal Treaty (https://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/15/science/treaty-on-ozone-i...).
The issue right now is that there is not the political will in the United States to address greenhouse gases, therefore people are trying to accomplish this through a very broad reading of the Clean Air Act. This will not be helpful in the long term as it just further associates fighting climate change with government overreach, and further politicizes what should not be a partisan issue.
The Clean Air Act doesn’t give the EPA blanket authority to “regulate clean air.” Congress can’t permissibly delegate an entire sector over to an administrative agency under the Constitution, and didn’t. The statute gives the EPA specific approaches that it’s allowed to use.
The fundamental issue is, is carbon dioxide an air pollutant? This is not so much about interpretation of the Clean Air Act IMO, as it is about peoples' opposing views on carbon dioxide as a significant contributor to climate change.
Those who believe carbon dioxide absolutely is contributing to climate change and harming our planet would likely classify carbon dioxide as an air pollutant and thus believe the EPA has the power to regulate it. Those that believe otherwise are not going to consider carbon dioxide an 'air pollutant' and thus not subject EPA regulation.
Look I’m all for addressing climate change head on. But I guess at the end of the day I just see this as regulatory overreach. Can one squint and see the rationale, definitely. But my simplistic mind sees the original intent of the bill as a way to protect against substances that are physically poisonous/harmful (radon, arsenic, etc). It was not intended to regulate safe emissions (co2) (that creates harm by increasing severe weather events/changing climate). If were to make a hyperbolic argument, it seems you could stop cement making, cattle ranching, and limit population control based on the EPAs interpretation of CO2 as a pollutant.
The clean air act isn't an EPA regulation. It was created by an act of congress, and part of that law requires the EPA to file regular reports on whether or not the law is working.
Agreed. This isn't about climate change, it's about proper procedure as the Constitution sets it up. The EPA went past its mandated purposes as set up by law. Congress needs to pass a new law to give it this power. If it can't, that's their problem. This was a good decision as far too much power has been given to the administrative state to basically make up laws.
> The term "system of emissions reduction" means control technology like scrubbers.
So the Majority asserts. The law, however, specifies nothing of the sort and intentionally uses broad phrasing.
The plain meaning of "system of emissions reduction" is "a set of measures that work together to reduce emissions" (as the EPA itself points out). And this is consistent with usage elsewhere in the Clean Air Act: in it, Congress refers to a cap-and-trade setup as an "emission allocation and transfer system." Systems clearly can be things that aren't just control technology.
The Majority is inventing an arbitrary and unsupported narrow definition of system for ideological reasons.
The clean air act clearly gives the EPA power to regulate emissions of pollutants that are a threat to welfare. It's not really arguable that that coal power plants fall into that or that greenhouse gases are pollutants that are a threat to welfare. This is a ridiculous decision that flies in the face of the law, and their justification that somehow this is too much and that Congress needed to specify that they had explicit authority over power plants because that is "too significant" is patently ridiculous. Congress gave them a mandate over pollutants, I don't see how that is possibly an overreach. The position that Congress can't put an agency in power of regulating emissions because that's too general is ridiculous.
That's not it at all. All parties agreed that Congress passed a law allowing the EPA to regular carbon emissions by setting emission limits on different types of power plants based on the best current technology available for emission reduction. The disagreement is whether that allows the EPA to set emission limits which are impossible to achieve, with the goal of forcing fossil fuel plants to shut down or subsidize renewable sources.
I don't know why you're focused on greenhouse gas emissions with regards to the Clean Air Act. So far as I'm aware, the Clean Air Act didn't attempt to address greenhouse gasses.
> The Clean Air Act sets national air quality standards to lower pollutants that cause smog, acid rain and other health dangers. It's never been used for greenhouse gases, but environmental groups now hope EPA might finally use it after ignoring the option for 11 years.
Perhaps this is good to change things up and see what other solutions are possible to address climate change. EPA does not have the will of the people or Congress, which detracts from its powers and potential impact. EPA may not be geared to address climate change or large energy-economy problems - just look at the current situation - whatever they are doing is not working. They are good at pollution mitigation and rule making. Climate change solutions may not be helped by rules or EPA type measures. Instead they require environments amenable to systematic energy transition: low on regulation, low on entry barriers to innovation, low on rules and policies, financially punishing to old solutions. Climate action is techno-economic challenge the EPA might not be suited for.
I don't understand why your question could possibly be answered by anything but a yes.
Can you provide any evidence that regulating clean air does not apply to air pollutants?
If a person thinks that CO2 is not air pollution, then the onus is on them to show that it's not. Repealing an entire class of laws in order to stop undesired scientific conclusions is not a good way to set legal precedent.
Restructuring the energy industry to address climate is a different solution to a different problem, related only by the commonality of emissions into air. It’s like using drug laws to regulate processed foods because both involve harm caused by ingesting things.
reply