The absolute beserk attitudes of the Greenies continues as the SCOTUS decision concerning the EPA’s capability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants is still reverberating (along with Dobbs (abortion back to the States), NYC (Second Amendment / Conceal Carry), and First Amendment (Religious Liberty for a football coach and religious school student vouchers)). This attitude also shows us all several things:
- First and foremost, they aren’t just sore losers, they are UGLY losers (and rather whiny winners a lot of the time)
- They only see things and issues ONLY from their own special interest lenses even as they are always yammering about “intersectionality” in which EVERYthing and EVERYone is connected to everything else – until that “network” starts to touch Conservatives and our ideas. Then their tolerance turns into whale snot.
- Their eventual goal is the only issue – legalities and laws are either to be ignored, swept aside in an SJW screaming snit, or they tantrum like my 6 year old Grandson (“IT’S NOT FAIR!”)
- For them, SCOTUS is a supra-legislature whose purpose has been, for decades, to find the desired conclusion and then retro-fit “laws” (or in the case of abortion, a magic glass wishing ball) to make it happen
And those last two bits blinds them to root causes. Like with Lloyd Alter over at TreeHugger (yes, I write about his posts because they are so ready for easy pickings) as he provides us with a Grade AA+ example of the above with his Title and subtitle (emphasis mine):
US Supreme Court Votes to Cook the Planet by Limiting EPA’s Power
The court overturns a hundred years of regulatory practice and kills carbon dioxide regulation.To nobody’s surprise, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6 to 3 to make it impossible for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect the environment from climate change, to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, to meet American commitments under the Paris Agreement, and likely to keep the planet from heating more than 2 degrees Celsius, let alone 1.5 degrees.
So much wrong in so little space. I could give him some space – he’s a Professor of Sustainability at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University)in Toronto, Canada – on more of the nuances of American Federal Government structure and organization. However, if you are going to write about something, and you’re unsure of the subject matter, ASK someone!
To unpack the above, in no particular order:
- more than 2 degrees Celsius, let alone 1.5 degrees – sorry, but your hubris outruns you. There is NO evidence that mankind can actually keep the Earth’s temperature in check. After all, dinosaurs roamed the poles long ago and I doubt they were wearing down jackets to keep warm at -51 degrees F.
- under the Paris Agreement – Obama signed it, Trump removed it, and Biden signed it again. It’s a useless piece of paper because IT ISN’T A TREATY – the US Senate never ratified it. Thus, when a President leaves, the next can rip it up. So Lloyd can just go stew about it but the bottom line is that it isn’t a legal document for the US.
- a hundred years of regulatory practice – he’s right about that but NOT because it is an American brand of “democracy”. What he is praising is the rise and power of The Administrative State – a bureaucratic form of Governance that isn’t Constitutional as this “new” Fourth Branch of Government, that makes laws and regulations just as powerful as Congress, has made both the Legislative and Judiciary superfluous.
The problem that Lloyd shares with almost all of the Left is these two things that are absolutely wrong about the SCOTUS decision:
- voted 6 to 3 to make it impossible – no, they didn’t.
- to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants – no, they didn’t
Lloyd even wrote the answers that contradicted his supposition:
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the decision:
“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day.’ But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme. A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.”
And we see the Separation of Powers that is essential to our American Governance – the Founders were sociological geniuses in stopping the concentration of Power by a few by separating the making of Law, the execution of that Law, and adjudicating disputes with three Branches. These were meant to be exceeding “jealous” of their Powers. Yet, the EPA, part of the Executive Branch, tried to “get away” by stealing its Power for regulating CO2 from Congress that never gave it to the EPA.
Lloyd writes:
Essentially, it was a gut of the EPA’s power to regulate anything that wasn’t in the original 1970 Clean Air Act authorized by Congress, back at a time when carbon dioxide wasn’t on the radar. It is almost as silly as saying the Second Amendment can only deal with muskets.
And there’s his answer which he decidedly ignores – the actual bill put into Law. So that’s all the background and I’d suggest go and reading what he writes – and how he uses Justice Kagan’s dissent that ignores the actual law (see “outcome over law” above) which shows that the Left, even at the level of SCOTUS, is happy to ignore the black and white letter of the law. It doesn’t matter, ma’am and Lloyd, that SCOTUS is not a problem domain expert on climate. However it IS the domain expert on Law and whether something can be done or not from a legal standpoint.
So with that long background, a couple of DISQUS comments by me about the above. I tried to make it CLEAR, on a number of times, what this really was about. However, this will be a multiple part series as with over 157 comments, and more showing up, I tried to keep these Eco-Socialists to the Rule Of Law standard.
Again, Separation of Powers is what is at the heart of this and not Global Warming. Emphasis is a combo of what I left at Treehugger and additional emphasis now:
One of the arguments that the majority made—or should we say made-up—is the “major questions doctrine” where something of critical importance should be referred back to Congress.
Really, Lloyd? We elect Representatives to make such major decisions and not mere agencies and the bureaucrats within those warrens. If you really believe in what you just said, why aren’t you working hammer and tong to get rid of YOUR version of Congress – the Canadian Parliament? And your version of your Constitution?
After all, it seems that your words, being part of the Academic/Intellectual Class, show your belief that technocrats should be in charge and just do away with all this messy, slow, and infuriating process called Democracy.
Just as the Socialists (under whatever camouflage words in use) have shown is their end game.
What SHOULD be happening is that our elected representatives actually do the hard, prolonged, and tedious writing of bills to address our concerns and NOT just heave a mess of a document over the wall and let bureaucrats do the heavy work that SHOULD be the Legislators responsibility.
SHOT: by VB:
These latest rulings need to be seen for what they represent: a coup d’état by a minority of powerful interests over the majority of the people in the country.
How frickin’ big of a lunatic are you?Just because you disagree with the ruling doesn’t mean that you burn the whole damn house down. That’s how impassioned, irresponsible, knee-jerk reacting children respond—not adults. Grow TF up. The world isn’t going to implode just because you didn’t get your own way!
CHASER: by me:
That’s what the Left does, VB – sore losers. Listen to them all given the Dobbs decision, the school voucher decision, the NYC concealed decision, this CO2 decision, and the football coach decision (#2 and #4 being First Amendment related, #2 being a 2A issue).
ILLEGITIMATE!! Pack he Court! Impeach the 6! And any of other assorted inanities.
Either Law means something or there is chaos. Either the Constitution’s black and white words MEAN something or we’re all screwed.
Hangover: by VB:
That’s what the Left does, VB – sore losers.
Bingo.
And the Left is so far left that their only solution is to turn this country into something other than a republic governed by THREE EQUAL BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT. They can’t stomach the idea they can’t always have their way, so instead, they gnash their teeth and throw histrionics and push irrational ideology of stacking the deck in their own selfish favor to ensure permanent future victories forever, rather than acknowledge the country is evenly divided politically.
Responding to a comment from VB that ONLY Congress controls immigration:
They forget the beatdown by SCOTUS when it set aside the decision by the CDC (during the pandemic) that it had the Power to set and enforce an eviction moratorium nationwide. SCOTUS saw that its authorizing legislation had no granting of such a Power.
Biden, once the decision was known, had the CDC issue it again and openly stated that it would take months for SCOTUS to take in and overrule it that action.
Heh! SCOTUS slapped him within a week and a half.
Back to the EPA – Lloyd has done EXACTLY what most others have done – blame SCOTUS for “limiting” the EPA.
Sorry Lloyd – you’re dead wrong. SCOTUS didn’t limit the EPA anymore than it did the CDC. It studied the actual authorizing law and saw that CONGRESS, the Legislative Branch, did not grant either agency in the Executive Branch such Powers.
If you want to be mad, sitting there in Toronto, blame CONGRESS for not granting such Powers. IT was the entity that “limited” the EPA.
I’ll also point out the obvious – Congress did decided to delegate certain Powers via legislation. However, granting either the Power for either evictions or CO2 regulation was not included. Tough noogies.
Thus, both the CDC and EPA showed what I’ve been saying for a long time – bureaucracies, over time, overstep their actual mission limitations as provided for in law.
At NO time should a mere set of unaccountable, unassailable, and unelected bureaucrats be shoving the rest of Society around REGARDLESS of the reasons you may hold. In the American system of Government, CONGRESS makes the Laws to be followed – the Executive Branch merely is to execute them and NOT further extend them, fuzzy its limitations, or ignore the law.
Either a Law IS or it isn’t. Simply because Congress didn’t grant a Power doesn’t mean that a 3 letter agency can “make stuff up“.
SCOTUS did the correct thing – in all 4 of the major cases over the last two weeks, it shoved Government (in part) back into its lane and back into its boundaries.
A very good thing indeed!
With a H/T from VB:
Either a Law IS or it isn’t. Simply because Congress didn’t grant a Power doesn’t mean that a 3 letter agency can “make stuff up”.
READ THAT LINE AGAIN, FOLKS. That’s the ENTIRE SCOTUS ruling in a nutshell!
Again, to repeat:
And this is the problem with the Left – for decades, the Democrats held the majority ideological majority on the court and became a supra-Legislature that the Democrats depended on.
Now the salty tears are flowing because, and FINALLY, laws are being read AS WRITTEN and the Justices are making decisions on the Powers actually granted as well as if they are Constitutional.
That IS their job.
In the end, this decision was NOT about global warming, not about CO2 emissions but about the Separation of Powers between the three co-equal branches of the American Federal Government as enumerated in the US Constitution.
The EPA believed it could legislate its own law, outside of that enumerated Separation – and get away with it with mere rule-making.
SCOTUS spanked them HARD for doing so- a correct decision.
Now, if y’all who only care about what you want instead of actual process, remember that if Congress does nothing, nothing can be done.
Nor should it.
And I’ll end on this:
Essentially, it was a gut of the EPA’s power to regulate anything that wasn’t in the original 1970 Clean Air Act authorized by Congress, back at a time when carbon dioxide wasn’t on the radar.”
Irrelevant and wrong. There was no “gutting”. This decision, as I’ve already stated, was ruled correctly. Congress NEVER gave the EPA such Powers. It could have then but didn’t.
It could have later on and any time during the Biden Administration – but didn’t.
If a government agency isn’t granted such authority, then it doesn’t have a leg to stand on. It is ILLEGAL to do otherwise.
What is so hard in understanding this? Just because you WANT it to be doesn’t make it so.
I’ve gone long but I’m hoping that for any on the Left that wanders in, repetition helps to promote learning and understanding. There’s much, MUCH more but enough for now.
