Many Supreme Court watchers have weighed the impact of Antonin Scalia’s death on this term’s cases. But by far the most vital issue is teed up for next year. Voting rights, union dues and class damages matter. Yet none can hold a candle to global warming.
America’s only way to honor its Paris climate pledge is to carry out the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would shift away from coal-fired power plants through an assertive reading of the Clean Air Act’s “existing source” standards. Obama took his cue from the court’s historic ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), which accepted greenhouse gases as air pollutants. “While the Congresses that drafted [the act] might not have appreciated the possibility that burning fossil fuels could lead to global warming,” wrote Justice John Paul Stevens, “they did understand that without regulatory flexibility, changing circumstances and scientific developments would soon render the Clean Air Act obsolete.”
