This post was originally published on this site
President Donald Trump and Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett are shown last month during her nomination ceremony. The judge has said climate change is ‘politically controversial.’
Getty Images
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court in a largely party-line vote in the Senate on Monday, offered comments on climate change during her recent confirmation hearings that raise questions about how combating the global threat might be considered at the highest judicial level.
Read: Amy Coney Barrett sworn in to the Supreme Court following Senate confirmation
Climate change is considered by many to be a high-stakes test for bipartisan deal-making in Congress. Action or inaction on the issue will shape the future of energy markets CL00, +3.00%, international trade, security pacts, and public-health issues.
Read: Fracking and the ‘Green New Deal’: Here’s where Trump and Biden stand on climate change
Here’s a look at two views as environmental and energy analysts assess the prospects for action at the federal-level on climate-change issues that could be tested in the Supreme Court that now has a 6-3 conservative majority:
In anticipation of the Barrett’s confirmation, Rolling Stone magazine published an op-ed signed by more 70 climate and science journalists whose work has appeared in such politically-varied publications as The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. They questioned whether Judge Coney Barrett is coming to the bench having accepted established science on global warming and whether she can pass judgement on potential cases without this basis of understanding.
During the Senate confirmation hearings for the Trump-appointee, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat, asked Judge Coney Barrett if she believed “human beings cause global warming.” She replied: “I don’t think I am competent to opine on what causes global warming or not. I don’t think that my views on global warming or climate change are relevant to the job I would do as a judge.”
Sen. Kamala Harris, the California Democrat, who joins former Vice President Joe Biden ticket challenging President Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 elections, tied established science on smoking risks and the spread of the coronavirus pandemic to climate change during her questioning at the hearing.
Judge Coney Barrett said that while previous topics are “completely uncontroversial,” climate change is instead, “a very contentious matter of public debate.” She continued: “I will not express a view on a matter of public policy, especially one that is politically controversial because that’s inconsistent with the judicial role, as I have explained.”
These comments left their mark.
“How can Judge Coney Barrett rule on pending issues of climate change liability, regulation, finance, mitigation, equity, justice, and accountability if she fails to accept even the underlying premise of global warming? The answer is that she cannot,” the writers said in their Rolling Stone op-ed.
But Charles Hernick, vice president of policy and advocacy for Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions Forum, in his own piece, argues that a conservative top court will play referee, returning the power to combat man-made climate change to Congress, where Republicans and Democrats are advancing climate-change bills, away from the executive branch’s hands.
“The Supreme Court already has reined in the executive branch once on climate change through the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan,” he wrote for Real Clear Energy. “It proved a bulky regulation that the Court froze in 2016 because the executive branch had exceeded Congress’ original authorities granted under the Clean Air Act and violated principles of cooperative federalism.”
“A more conservative Court will assure that federal climate action is firmly rooted in laws crafted by Congress. It also will force climate activists to choose a path to tackle climate action based on well-established federal and state jurisdictions,” Hernick wrote.
It is Hernick’s view that the U.S. leads the world in greenhouse gas emissions reductions because of complementary federal and state policy, though the U.S. is still the world’s largest cumulative carbon dioxide emitter.
“Future emissions reductions can be achieved by doubling down on and expanding proven successful policies and approaches instead of pursuing policies that would upend the rights of states under the Federal Power Act of 1935 to shape their resource mixes,” he said.
As competing and sometimes cooperative versions of climate action await further attention in a mixed Congress (track the bills here), what is clear is that executive power plays on climate change and energy have been a hallmark of the Trump administration. It has rolled back roughly 100 Environmental Protection Agency rules, some of which were decades old and survived presidencies of both parties.
