Denial to Delay: The Battle Over the Clean Air Act

Drilled

Critical Frequency

True Crime, Earth Sciences, Social Sciences, Science

4.8 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts vs. EPA that when the U.S. Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, climate science was “in its infancy,” implying that government officials could never have intended for the legislation to cover the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, SCOTUS doubled down on that idea, ruling in West Virginia v EPA that since the Clean Air Act didn't explicitly talk about climate change, the EPA cannot regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Now, new historical evidence unearthed by a team of Harvard University researchers led by Naomi Oreskes calls the court's understanding of the history of climate science into question, which could have major implications for the government's ability to regulate climate-changing emissions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The past two years has seen the Supreme Court of the United States
0:05.3	fundamentally reshape the government's ability to regulate greenhouse gas
0:10.5	emissions. I'm primarily talking about rulings in three cases. West Virginia
0:17.2	versus EPA in 2022 and then two cases called Loper Bright and Corner Post in 2024. Loper Bright got a lot of attention because it is the case that got rid of what's called Chevron deference.
0:34.0	Chevron deference was a precedent that was in place for a number of decades.
0:38.6	It basically said that when legislation or a particular statute has not been explicit about exactly how a law should be
0:45.4	implemented by an agency it's up to that agency to decide how to implement the law
0:51.0	the idea being that laws are often quite vague, it's up to regulatory
0:56.2	agencies to implement those laws based on what their experts are telling them. That is gone now, which means prepare to see a lot of
1:05.2	lawsuits about regulations, particularly environmental regulations. The
1:09.9	Corner Post ruling came out during the same Supreme Court session and got almost no coverage
1:15.8	but is equally problematic when it comes to environmental and climate policy.
1:21.6	That case got rid of the statute of limitations on legal
1:26.6	challenges to previously passed legislation. So if you think about the most
1:31.6	recent 10 years or so, you know, an administration comes in,
1:36.2	they pass a new power plant rule, it gets challenged.
1:39.8	That makes its way through the court.
1:41.6	We have not seen, for example, a challenge to a rule that came about in the
1:47.4	Clinton administration because there was a statute of limitations on that sort of litigation. Now that's gone.
1:55.7	So just think about what that might mean, if the Koch brothers, for example,
2:00.6	continue to fire up their litigation machine and start filing suits challenging
2:07.0	all of the past 20 years worth of environmental regulations. That is what we are in for in the years ahead.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -182 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Critical Frequency, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Critical Frequency and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.