US supreme court restricts power of government to tackle climate crisis

The US supreme court has sided with Republican-led states to in effect hobble the federal government's ability to tackle the climate crisis, in a ruling that will have profound implications for the government's overall regulatory power.

- Oliver Milman

In a 6-3 decision that will seriously hinder the US's ability to stave off disastrous global heating, the supreme court, which became dominated by rightwing justices under Donald Trump's administration, has opted to support a case brought by West Virginia that demands the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) be limited in how it regulates planet heating gases from the energy sector.

The case, which was backed by a host of other Republican-led states including Texas and Kentucky, was highly unusual in that it was based on the Clean Power Plan, a Barack Obama-era strategy to cut emissions from coal-fired power plants that never came into effect. Joe Biden's administration sought to have the case dismissed as baseless given the plan was dropped.

Not only was this a case about a regulation that never took effect and that would have imposed obligations on the energy sector that it would have met regardless, but it also involves two legal doctrines that are not mentioned in the constitution, and that most scholars agree have no basis in any federal statute.