So what are we to call the Supremes' 5-4 ruling in Michigan v, Environmental Protection Agency? A consolation prize? If so, it isn't much of one:
A divided Supreme Court on Monday ruled against federal regulators' attempt to limit power plant emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants.
The rules began to take effect in April, but the court split 5-4 along ideological lines to rule that the Environmental Protection Agency failed to take their cost into account when the agency first decided to regulate the toxic emissions from coal- and oil-fired plants.
The EPA did factor in costs at a later stage when it wrote standards that are expected to reduce the toxic emissions by 90%. They were supposed to be fully in place next year. The issue was whether health risks are the only consideration under the Clean Air Act.
The challenge was brought by industry groups and twenty-one Republican-led States.
That should have simply nullified these illegal EPA regs instead. This time, at least, they got lucky.
Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said it is not appropriate to impose billions of dollars of economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits.
The case now goes back to lower courts for the EPA to decide how to account for costs.
Which is to say, the Obama EPA will double-down and ignore this SCOTUS ruling. [emphasis added]
- Me, forty-five days ago
And here we go:
North Dakota would have been required to cut emissions just 10.6% to comply with the draft rule, the least of any State; it will have to cut emissions 44.9% to comply with the final rule, the most of any State except for similarly fossil-fueled Montana and South Dakota. Coal-rich Wyoming, Kentucky, West Virginia and Indiana were also among the biggest losers in the revised plan. Meanwhile, the States that are already "greening" [i.e. shutting down] their grids — led by Washington, Oregon and New York — were the biggest winners in the final rule.
That is a radical change. The EPA acknowledged in the plan that it “rectifies what would have been an inefficient, unintended outcome of putting the greater reduction burden on lower-emitting sources and States.” As EPA air quality chief Janet McCabe explained to me in an interview: “We got a lot of comments making the same point you did.” But it hasn’t gotten attention, perhaps because coal-State politicians cried wolf so loudly about the draft. It’s the result of a decision to calculate emissions according to a uniform measurement for every power plant rather than a weirdly calibrated analysis of what’s reasonable for individual States. [emphases added]
It's also a great, big "FU" to every State that didn't give their electoral votes to Barack Obama in 2012 as well as both an unconstitutional and already-SCOTUS-stricken-down bureaucratic nuclear strike against the U.S. energy sector, and a great, big smooch to every "blue" State in The One's Kool Aid-swilling congregation.
Or, as he's put it in the not too distant past:
Oh, and in case you were wondering whether these viciously draconian and illegal rules would actually improve air quality....:
But the big question about the plan is whether it will accelerate America’s ongoing shifts away from coal and towards wind and solar. The answer, according to the plan itself, is no. Its targets are “fully consistent with the recent changes and current trends in electricity generation, and as a result, would by no means entail fundamental redirection of the energy sector.” [emphases added]
When we use terms like "war" to describe the Obama Regime's domestic policies, we're neither hyperbolizing or exaggerating. If anything, we're grievously euphemizing.
NOW will the targeted States start getting serious about flat-out, blanket nullification instead of wasting time with the Obama federal courts? Because he's certainly not equivalently handicapping himself.
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