Delay of clean power plan stokes worries about Paris treaty

The Supreme Court’s decision to put a stay on EPA’s so-called Clean Power Plan took almost everyone by surprise.

Last year, dirty coal companies tried and failed to repeal the Clean Power Plan.

“Delay means more greenhouse-gas emissions and more global warming, ” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. Thomas Donohue, chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a digital press release: “The Supreme Court’s stay of this rule…will ensure that America will not be forced to make costly and irreversible implementation decisions based upon an unprecedented regulation until judicial review is complete”.

Don’t doubt this for a minute: Polluters and their champions in Congress, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s decision, will push to make this a permanent setback.

“The Clean Power Plan is an important step in battling the effects of climate disruption, and can can also dramatically improve the health of Arkansans while boosting our state’s economy”, he said. The Supreme Court rarely issues these types of stays on regulations.

“I think we will see a greater confidence within the coal community”, he said, “and among state legislatures and governors around the country that they don’t have to impose these costs on themselves”. And we know the EPA was extremely careful to put the Clean Power Plan on solid legal and scientific footing. The Obama rule would require New Jersey to limit carbon emissions to 812 pounds per megawatt hour by 2030, she said.

But on Wednesday at least four states – California, Colorado, Virginia and Washington – pledged to continue implementing the plan despite the Court rule, while a New York-led coalition of 14 states issued a statement stressing their continued support of the Clean Power Plan. “If we had spent as much money developing clean coal technology in the past 20 years as we have trying to shut down coal mines, we would have saved a lot of jobs”, Cox said. Once again, The Supreme Court halted President Obama going around Congress. “But states that rely heavily on coal to produce electricity, including Kentucky and West Virginia, had argued that the plan was unconstitutional”.

The ADEQ’s Keogh agreed that although the meetings with stakeholders will likely take a different shape, the process will continue in some form. And being one of the largest carbon emitters throughout history, one of the foundations of the Paris Agreement was the U.S.’s agreement to significant cut its own emissions.

Virginia is one of several states, along with cities like Chicago and NY, which joined the filing defend the Clean Power Plan.

The procedural ruling specifically addresses a lower-court decision to allow the plan to stay in place while the legal challenge is being adjudicated.