It’s been a busy few weeks for the highest court in the land. Not content with just overturning Roe v. Wade and endangering the reproductive autonomy of more than half of the U.S. population, the Supreme Court also voted on Thursday to limit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s ability to restrict power plant emissions, dealing a major blow to the movement to defend the planet against the steadily increasing threat of climate change.
The vote was 6–3, with many Republicans—including Senator Mitch McConnell—cheering the decision and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi noting that “in just two weeks, the court has acted to erase reproductive health freedom, flood our public places with more deadly weapons, and, now, to let our planet burn.” Justice Elena Kagan appeared to agree, writing in a dissent: “Whatever else this court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change. And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling on the case in question, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, essentially takes the power to limit emissions from existing power plants away from the EPA and hands it to Congress. Personally, I’d prefer if we listened to scientists and climate change experts about how to lessen our chances of seeing a largely uninhabitable earth within our lifetimes instead of punting the decision-making to a governing body that often seems (at best) hopelessly divided, but that’s just me!