Sep 28, 2016If the DC circuit court rules against the Obama administration, it is likely to do so on narrow and technical grounds.
↩︎ Climate Advisers
The Fate of the Clean Power Plan
- Climate math meets methane and the results aren't pretty for fossil fuel infrastructure. Updated Sep 28, 2016 ago
- Global warming isn't a Chinese hoax, but there is tomfoolery at the bottom of this week's Clean Power Plan case.
- What is the Clean Power Plan? If upheld, it will reduce carbon pollution from utilities by 30%.
The Climate Math Meets Methane
One of the biggest questions facing American energy policy is the role of natural gas. The Clean Power Plan swaps gas in for coal, but that has led to higher methane emissions than previously projected. Natural gas can be cheaply had through domestic fracking, and Donald Trump has played up his support for the fossil fuel in states like Pennsylvania. On the other hand, fracking is undeniably a consequence of Obama's controversial "all of the above" energy platform, and though he seems to have moved away from it, the Democratic Party remains split on whether the climate impacts of methane are too dire to keep fracking.
If you do the climate math, the answer is even simpler: we have to stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure right away.
What Is the Clean Power Plan?
If the Clean Power Plan is upheld, it will reduce carbon pollution from utilities by 30%. That would require a severe decrease in reliance on coal for electricity. The scheme will raise the cost for utilities to produce electricity, but not the price that consumers pay.
Stockholm Syndrome
The Clean Power Plan is central, but not essential, to the United States' role in global climate action. Obama's success in climate climate diplomacy is notable; whether he earned the Nobel Peace Prize when he won it or not, he probably has now. His leadership abroad was by all accounts integral to the international passage of the Paris Agreement, and in 2016 he threw the country's weight squarely behind bilateral deals that brought China and India towards joining as well.
The Paris Agreement is a framework for moving ahead global action on climate change. Once it is ratified by an international quorum, all 191 signatories to the Agreement become party to its rules, which include mandated emissions cuts by each state. It's up to the country to say how it will achieve those emissions reductions, and the Clean Power Plan is Obama's signature policy behind America's intended contribution.
Necessary context: The Clean Power Plan is important, but it's not enough on its own to reach America's target.
Sep 28, 2016In some places, like California, it’ll make practically no difference at all. In others, like North Dakota, it’ll be earth-shifting.
↩︎ Inside Energy
Environmental Regulations Are Still Shifting Energy Use
Despite the hold put on the Clean Power Plan, Obama has been able to reduce climate pollution through other domestic instruments. That includes expanding regulation to cover trucks and planes, using existing rules to require states to reduce unhealthy pollution that is cogenerated with carbon dioxide at coal plants, and withholding funding from states that don't comply.
The stay also didn't prevent the EPA from helping some states form carbon cap-and-trade style markets and defining a social cost of carbon that guides how government projects are evaluated.
The Ghost of Antonin Scalia
The legal challenge to the Clean Power Plan essentially contends that the executive branch doesn't have the power to intepret laws passed by Congress in new ways based on new information. It's a sort of specific application of legal originalism that Justice Scalia, may he rest in peace, invoked in joining four other justices in staying the Clean Power Plan last year.
Environmentalists had hoped a swift resolution to Scalia's death would strengthen the Clean Power Plan against a court challenge, but his ghost continues to haunt Obama: yesterday a judge invoked a Scalia precedent that suggests Congress, not regulators, must be the source of decisions with "economy-wide" impacts.
The Editors' Longreads Picks
- An excellent essay on poverty and writing by Starr Davis. Updated May 31, 2022
- Novelist Héctor Tobar tries to understand the 1992 Los Angeles riots through the experiences of a single high school.
- Steven Johnson with a long assessment of the current state of A.I. and language. (The illusion has gotten very good.)
Welcome to The Morning News Tournament of Books, 2017 edition.
- Our championship match is decided in the Tournament of Books, with news of a Rooster surprise debuting this summer. Updated Mar 31, 2017
- In Thursday's action, Reyhan Harmanci sets up a colossal final.
- The Zombie round opens with Buzzfeed's Isaac Fitzgerald reading The Nix and The Underground Railroad.
Все ваши Белый дом принадлежит нам.
- "Will Putin expose the failings of American democracy or will he inadvertently expose the strength of American democracy?" Updated Mar 3, 2017
- Wilbur Ross just wanted to make some money in ethically gray areas (that should've prevented him from taking office).
- Jeff Sessions's spokeswoman can't help but continue to lie.
The oceans are under assault, and not just from the White House and friends.
- Trump's assault on the environment begins with American headwaters. Updated Mar 1, 2017
- Don't just blame the oil companies for destroying the oceans—blame sushi restaurants.
- Nothing escapes the deepest trenches of the ocean floor. Not light, not nutrients, not pollutants.