[HN Gopher] 1970 Clean Air Act was intended to cover carbon dioxide
___________________________________________________________________
1970 Clean Air Act was intended to cover carbon dioxide
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 126 points
Date : 2024-08-07 17:05 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e360.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (e360.yale.edu)
| jmclnx wrote:
| I remember as a young kid, all the commercials with the tag line
| "CO2, the clean gas". Or something like that, I can only assume
| the Oil Industry had a big hand in removing CO2 from the act.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Sure you're not mixing that up with natural gas? Usually
| advertised as clean compared to other fuels (coal, especially
| for power plants, but also sometimes to gas and diesel for
| vehicles). Though often the comparison part was left out or
| left very understated implying that it was somehow non-harmful
| or non-environmentally impacting.
| jandrese wrote:
| I couldn't find anything on Google under the tagline "CH4,
| the clean gas", and all of the marketing I could find called
| it natrual gas instead. It was marketed as a "clean"
| solution, laughable as that may be. I guess it's a little
| less bullshit than all of the "clean coal" marketing.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| They wouldn't have advertised it as "CH4", that's not how
| people know it. It'd be methane or natural gas, more likely
| natural gas. Though the examples I'm coming up with are
| more recent than I was thinking (last decade) so unless GP
| is _very_ young wouldn 't have been around in their
| childhood. Continuing my search, but I have recollections
| of a 2000s push for natural gas that was heavily predicated
| on its "cleanness". Lots of city and school buses, for
| instance, were switching to CNG from diesel in that time
| period (and in comparison, CNG is almost certainly cleaner
| than diesel).
|
| EDIT:
|
| Ok, found some things. Google Image search for (no quotes)
| "clean natural gas" and set the range to 2000-2010. You'll
| find a variety of images both for and against this claim.
| Including things like "This Bus Is Running On Clean Natural
| Gas" (2009) [0] or "Clean. Affordable. Abundant. American.
| Natural gas is the answer. Tell Congress to put it to
| work." (apparently from 2010) [1]
|
| [0] https://images.app.goo.gl/yfrQn8fYrB7zLqqh9
|
| [1] https://images.app.goo.gl/4Aj7ybMt3wVWq49BA
|
| Here's [2] an example from the 1980s calling it cleaner,
| source for me was [3].
|
| [2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ympy04dETxXWfqkCn0zm9N
| mE1z1...
|
| [3]
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/18/the-
| forg...
| seiferteric wrote:
| Also methane has a higher proportion of hydrogen than
| other fuels and so releases less CO2 and more water when
| burned.
| jandrese wrote:
| The problem with that theory is that it is hard to
| mistake "natural gas" for "CO2". CO2 to CH4 is exactly
| the sort of thing that people would mix up.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41184982 - from the
| original commenter in reply to my question. They
| apparently did make that mistake.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Yes, that is it, Natural Gas. Been a long time.
|
| But it was around the time of this bill, so it makes one
| wonder.
| josh-sematic wrote:
| I wonder whether this changes anything in practical terms. Can
| the EPA start enforcing the CO2 regulations again and take it
| back to the Supreme Court with this as part of the defense? Or is
| there another pathway to get a new judgement from the courts by
| taking this evidence into consideration?
| jandrese wrote:
| With Chevron deference dead they won't be able to enforce
| anything about CO2 without it getting tied up in the courts and
| probably killed in one of the circuit courts.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Youd need a new court first lol I don't think the current one
| is very open to suggestion
| hughesjj wrote:
| End of the day we can always ignore the Supreme Court rulings.
| Thermonuclear option.
|
| Marburey vs Madison was the courts interpreting the
| constitution to say that judicial review exists. Judicial
| review _itself_ is a precedent that we 've all been following
| in good faith.
|
| I'd honestly love a historic review of judicial review and see
| if we think it's been a net positive or negative. For every
| civilian rights win there's also a dredd Scott, not sure how
| it's balanced on the whole. I've always thought it was a good
| thing and I like it in theory but... Now that I'm older I'm
| thinking about it's application in practice more critically
| hash872 wrote:
| I have a pretty low opinion of judicial review, but I'm not
| clear that reviewing actions by administrative agencies
| actually qualifies as JR. Review is when the courts strike
| down actual laws passed by Congress. In this case it's an
| administrative action by an agency
| ImJamal wrote:
| Since Marbury vs Madison was so early on it would be hard to
| really figure out if it has been a net positive. We can make
| some assumptions about what would have happened, but I don't
| think it would really be practical to come to any conclusion.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yeah, wait for someone to die and put someone else on the
| court. The Supreme Court has completely changed its mind on
| basically every important issue in the country's history, and
| it does so when the justices change, not when the evidence
| changes. They are not divine arbiters of truth, they're just
| people with opinions.
|
| Here's a full list if you're curious:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_overruled_United_State...
|
| One fun example: in 1940 they rule 8-1 that schools can compel
| students to salute the flag and recite the pledge of allegiance
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minersville_School_District_v...
| .). Then 3 years later they say oops nevermind, actually you
| can't do that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_Stat
| e_Board_of_E...). Some justices were in the majority on both
| cases.
|
| Did the Constitution change in those 3 years? No, the people
| changed.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Alternatives to waiting include expanding the number of
| justices and impeachment, both of which are available to
| Congress
| giantg2 wrote:
| Am I missing something? I didn't see the study linked in the
| article.
|
| You would think that any competent lawyer would have had this
| research performed as part of the prior case. Makes me wonder
| what they actually found.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Yes, you missed the last paragraph:
|
| > The study, soon to be published in _Ecology Law Quarterly_ ,
| concludes that Congress "understood far more about the
| potential threat of anthropogenic climate change than either
| the [Supreme] Court or most commentators have recognized."
|
| This is an announcement and summary of key points of the study,
| it is not able to link to it because it's not been published
| yet.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They do sometimes share pre-publication drafts. Seems
| premature to put out an article with almost nothing in it.
| The information in the article lacks any sort of detail or
| even a logic basis for tying the points together. Plenty of
| policians make claims on a topic related to a bill that go
| farther than the actual bill that passes. So while one person
| has an interpretation the other members of congress can have
| different interpretations when passing the bill. That's why
| the preamble and the bill's contents are so important.
| Perhaps even the notes from the debate. But just a statement
| outside of those contexts? Bit of a stretch without seeing
| the research.
| colpabar wrote:
| > The study, soon to be published in Ecology Law Quarterly,
| concludes that Congress "understood far more about the
| potential threat of anthropogenic climate change than either
| the [Supreme] Court or most commentators have recognized."
|
| Looks like it hasn't been published yet.
| andrewla wrote:
| This endless jockeying to try to get the courts to allow the
| executive branch to have more power is ridiculous and dangerous.
|
| If Congress wants the EPA to regulate CO2 they should just pass
| that as a law. The reticence to act on this is bananas. Congress
| has all the power here -- they can give the EPA discretion or
| specify a mandate for how they handle CO2.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| They did pass it as law, called the 1970 clean air act.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| This is clearly under dispute and not a fact that can be
| stated so cleanly . The article itself makes it clear that
| the Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that this is not the case.h
| mbStavola wrote:
| Seemed to be the case for 50+ years.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Yeah and I have some "Major Questions" about whether the
| courts are following the constitution, or just working
| backwards from whatever gets their right wing agenda pushed
| through
| RangerScience wrote:
| Check out the book "Legal Systems Very Different From Our
| Own" for the millennia-old tradition that is "finding a
| way to interpret a holy text according to your politics"
| burkaman wrote:
| It is understandably confusing, because the Supreme Court
| also ruled that it is the case in 2007:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_v._EPA.
|
| > greenhouse gases fit well within the CAA's capacious
| definition of air pollutant
|
| - United States Supreme Court
| andrewla wrote:
| I mean, the 1970 act did spell out certain places where the
| EPA has authority in regulating greenhouse gases, including
| specifically CO2.
|
| But they did not authorize the way that the EPA was setting
| standards for gas-fired power plants. The technicalities here
| run deep, but the fact that some academics at Yale think that
| it should be allowed tells us nothing -- already, three of
| the most brilliant legal minds in the country have already
| publicly dissented from the Supreme Court's opinion on the
| subject.
|
| In the face of the ambiguity, the bias should be for the
| legislature to act to correct the ambiguity. There is no
| constitutional issue at stake, just a question of what the
| act authorized. Congress can just deal with this.
|
| EDIT: This is incorrect; as pointed out below, the 1970 Act
| did not mention greenhouse gases or CO2 specifically. As of
| the 2022 amendment to the act there are several explict areas
| where greenhouse gases are specifically mentioned.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| If there's ambiguity, the Supreme Court should defer to the
| executive and let Congress pass a new law if they disagree.
| It doesn't make sense for the tie to go to inaction. We
| elect Presidents exactly so they can steer the executive in
| the direction we like! Requiring all three branches to
| agree (Congress passes the law, Executive actually does it,
| Court says it's okay) is a recipe for national paralysis.
| nradov wrote:
| That is just completely wrong and you have misunderstood
| why we elect Presidents. Your opinion isn't supported by
| anything in the Constitution.
| mikestew wrote:
| How does the concept of "checks and balances" fit into
| your view? I ask because, as sibling commenter points
| out, that's just not how the Constitution says it works.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| You could get a very reasonable answer to your question
| by reading Chevron or the dissents of Loper.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| No. That's not how it's supposed to work. Without
| delegation (which has happened), the presidency (and
| Executive branch broadly) is constrained by the
| Constitution, the laws set by Congress, international
| treaties (consequence of the Constitution), and
| restricted by the interpretation and judgement of the
| courts. If there's ambiguity the Executive can make their
| own call, they don't have to sit and wait, but they can
| then be challenged in the courts and have to stop acting
| in a manner judged inconsistent with the law,
| constitution, and treaties.
| plorg wrote:
| If it's truly a matter of ambiguity then the court is not
| adjudicating an inconsistency, it is inserting is own
| judgement about what the other party (Congress) said -
| when the other party has the ability to assert its
| intentions directly.
| Khaine wrote:
| Yes, Congress can solve this buy doing their job and
| passing a law to clarify the fact. The fact they don't
| demonstrates the dysfunction in the US, and the craziness
| that everyone thinks they can get the executive branch to
| do an end run around the constitution.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> I mean, the 1970 act did spell out certain places where
| the EPA has authority in regulating greenhouse gases,
| including specifically CO2.
|
| The text of the 1970 Clean Air Act is at
| https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/91/hr17255/text, in
| which places does the text specifically call out the
| authority of the EPA to regulate CO2?
|
| I do not see the words "CO2" or "carbon dioxide" in the
| text. I see references to "carbon monoxide" and
| "hydrocarbons" neither of which refer to CO2.
| burkaman wrote:
| Read section 108, which explicitly says the EPA
| administrator has the authority to decide what is
| considered a pollutant. The Supreme Court held that CO2
| should be considered a pollutant under this authority:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_v._EPA.
|
| You may also be interested in the 2022 amendments to the
| Clean Air Act passed by Congress, which explicitly
| enumerate greenhouse gases as substances to be regulated
| by the EPA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_%
| 28United_States....
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> Read section 108
|
| That does not contain wording "including specifically
| CO2", which was the assertion I responded to.
|
| >> You may also be interested in the 2022 amendments
|
| No, I was interested in the original assertion that the
| 1970 Clean Air Act "spell[ed] out certain places where
| the EPA has authority in regulating greenhouse gases,
| including specifically CO2".
| vel0city wrote:
| > The Administrator shall, within 90 days after December
| 31, 1970, publish (and from time to time thereafter shall
| revise) a list of categories of stationary sources. He
| shall include a category of sources in such list if in
| his judgment it causes, or contributes significantly to,
| air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to
| endanger public health or welfare.
|
| The argument is CO2 emissions lead to continued climate
| change which unless you think climate change is a hoax
| made by the Chinese to kill US manufacturing it is
| reasonably anticipated to endanger public health or
| welfare.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Since Chevron is out, the courts will have rule on every
| footnote of every regulation.
|
| But since both sides are the same, I'm sure Congress will act
| with all due diligence.
| jandrese wrote:
| Handing the power over to the dysfunctional Congress is exactly
| how the oil and gas industry intends to win. They own enough
| congressmen to make sure any such legislation never makes it
| out of committee.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > They own enough congressmen to make sure any such
| legislation never makes it out of committee.
|
| Campaign donations are a powerful motivator but they lose to
| real public pressure every time. The public is not very
| interested in this problem because it's incredibly abstract
| and none of the proposed solutions seem designed to actually
| solve it without forcing a religious level of austerity on
| them.
| gman83 wrote:
| This definitely used to be the case, but since Citizens
| United those donations have absolutely exploded, and
| combine that with the gerrymandering of districts into very
| safe districts, public pressure might no longer be
| sufficient to sway those politicians, the jury is still out
| on that.
|
| Most Americans do actually want action on climate change:
| https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-
| data/yc...
| akira2501 wrote:
| > but since Citizens United those donations have
| absolutely exploded
|
| That case has implications respecting third party
| advertising but it has no bearing on direct campaign
| contributions to candidates.
|
| > combine that with the gerrymandering of districts into
| very safe districts
|
| The purpose of this gerrymandering is to reduce the total
| voter turnout. Most senators get elected with less than
| half the voting population turning out, many as little as
| 25%. Which means currently only 1/8 of your population
| needs to vote for you to win.
|
| It's really a vulnerability they've created for
| themselves, but you have to have the confidence to run as
| a third party candidate in order to take advantage of
| this. This is a uniparty game that strengthens the false
| dichotomy and not really material for our purposes here.
|
| > public pressure might no longer be sufficient to sway
| those politicians, the jury is still out on that.
|
| Is there a case where significant public pressure has
| failed? Saying "voters want action on climate change" is
| meaningless. Of course they do. Who actually _wants_ to
| ruin the planet or destroy their health? Nobody.
|
| How do we do this? Which metrics do we use? Who is
| responsible for implementation? What impacts will this
| have on average citizens? These are the questions that
| need answering, and unfortunately, there's too much
| actual division on these issues to foment a clear
| _federal_ plan forward let alone anything that would be
| effective or enforced world wide.
| gman83 wrote:
| > That case has implications respecting third party
| advertising but it has no bearing on direct campaign
| contributions to candidates.
|
| It's by now become rather clear that both parties have
| found loopholes to get around the so called firewall
| between the campaigns and these third parties:
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/08/super-pacs-
| raise-mi...
|
| > Is there a case where significant public pressure has
| failed?
|
| I guess the best example would be campaign finance reform
| itself. That's an issue Democrats and Republicans
| actually agree on:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/money-
| power-...
| lupusreal wrote:
| Congress being "dysfunctional" is just a way of saying
| Congress doesn't agree to do what you think it should. If the
| political will to do this isn't there (and it clearly isn't,
| otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation) then it
| shouldn't be done.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No, it says more than that. The most fundamental duty of
| Congress is to pass the budget. Well, how are they doing at
| that?
|
| Lousy, that's how. Congress has been historically
| _terrible_ at that the last few years. _They can 't even
| pass a budget._ (No, the Nth continuing resolution for the
| next M months is not the same.)
|
| So "dysfunctional" means "can't function", not just
| "doesn't do what I want".
| lupusreal wrote:
| Congress is only meant to pass budgets if they can agree
| on one. If they can't, then they aren't supposed to.
| Anyway, after a lot of bluffing and negotiation they
| inevitability get it done, the process you deride as
| dysfunction is simply politics. There's no rule that they
| _must_ do it as fast or smoothly as you think they
| should. Calling Congress dysfunctional is just political
| rhetoric.
| immibis wrote:
| And if Congress doesn't pass a budget because it doesn't
| agree on one, the whole country is meant to grind to a
| halt. This is mutually assured destruction, guaranteeing
| that Congress will pass a budget.
| hash872 wrote:
| Handing more & more power to a president is exactly how all
| of the other presidential systems in the world have collapsed
| into autocracy. I do not think the oil & gas industry 'owns'
| more than a minority of Congressmen and women, however you
| want to define that term. Remove the filibuster, weaken the
| Speaker of the House and return more power to the old
| committee system- that's how you empower Congress and get
| more legislation passed. But whatever you do do not hand more
| power to 1 single person. The US still has a relatively weak
| presidential system compared to other countries, and we
| should strive to stay that way
|
| Edit to include: And this includes administrative agencies
| staffed by executive branch appointees. I'd like to see the
| Venn diagram of confused people who think 'no we shouldn't
| have an imperial presidency' but 'yes courts should defer to
| agency interpretations when the agency is run by appointees
| of the President'. Like The Office meme- it's the same
| picture!
| jandrese wrote:
| Do you think everybody at the EPA is fired and a new batch
| of people are brought in every time control of the White
| House changes? The main advantage of these federal agencies
| is that they were somewhat stable regardless of who is in
| charge. Career bureaucrats who just do their job decade
| after decade. Sure the head of the agency gets appointed by
| the President and they do set a general policy, but it's
| not like the rulebooks are getting rewritten every 4 or 8
| years.
| gman83 wrote:
| Trump has a plan to reclassify 50,000 career bureaucrats
| as "Schedule F" political appointees.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Do you think everybody at the EPA is fired and a new
| batch of people are brought in every time control of the
| White House changes?
|
| I mean, that's how it used to work:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Ref
| orm...
| hash872 wrote:
| No, the political appointees who run the EPA do change
| with a different administration. In the US system, the
| president (via appointees) runs the agencies.
|
| Yes, the rulebooks are literally rewritten every 4-8
| years. EPA examples, Trump renewed the permit for the
| Keystone XL pipeline (Obama had denied it), 'rewrote key
| rules curbing U.S. carbon emissions and other
| environmental regulations' (1), rolled back all of the
| Obama administration's fuel economy & emission standards,
| rolled back efficient lighting regulations, etc. He
| replaced the Clean Power Plan, redefined what species are
| endangered, weakened the Coal Ash rule, revised the
| Mercury standards. And so on.
|
| He did all of these directly through the EPA- not by
| passing new laws. Then, Biden reversed all of these
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_policy_of_
| the_Do...
| elzbardico wrote:
| As if there was not plenty of money to be done on renewables,
| replacing all the current fleet of automobiles, and of course
| all the financing that will be required to enable the green
| transition. As if the investor behind both industries weren't
| basically the same.
|
| There are orders of magnitude more money to be made by the
| billionaires with a renewable based green transition than
| with oil. It will be the biggest transfer of wealth from the
| poor and middle class into the pockets of the bastardly rich
| in the whole history.
| pfisch wrote:
| huh? People are going to buy cars. They will be electric or
| they won't. Either way, people are going to buy cars.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > huh? People are going to buy cars. They will be
| electric or they won't. Either way, people are going to
| buy cars.
|
| I think that this is a short-term picture. The US
| infrastructure has been set up to make owning a car a
| very rewarding proposition, so, of course, lots of people
| own cars, and that will continue to be the case as long
| as things stay in the neighborhood of where they are. But
| there's no reason that future infrastructure decisions
| have to be made in a way that continues to privilege cars
| over other forms of transportation, and car ownership
| will follow, with a lag, the way that infrastructure
| decisions point.
| jerf wrote:
| So, the theory is, the oil and gas industry can afford a few
| dozen or hundred Congressmen, but can't afford a President,
| or a Secretary, or even a few unelected bureaucrats whose
| offices I don't even know how to name that are actually
| making these decisions?
|
| The problem isn't that you are wrong. You're right that
| Congress is for sale. The problem is, _everyone_ is for sale,
| so that 's a null argument; it cuts against you exactly as
| much as it cuts for you.
|
| I mean, that totally blows. Don't mistake me for celebrating
| this. But it doesn't work as a "let's give the $BRANCH power
| over this" argument in any direction.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Kind of a weird argument when the whole discussion is about
| a time when the executive stood up to the fossil fuel
| industry and heavily tightened regulations. Further, un-
| elected bureaucrats accepting bribes for official acts is
| plainly illegal* and they don't have campaign funds which
| is the primary way money moves from industry to congress'
| pockets.
|
| *becoming less illegal thanks to scotus
| https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-
| scop...
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| You say that as if supreme court justices aren't also for
| sale.
|
| We need a solution for bribery (including current forms of
| "legal" bribery).
| burningChrome wrote:
| >> You say that as if supreme court justices aren't also
| for sale.
|
| Is this something that's recent you're seeing? I haven't
| done any research to find out if this has been a thing for
| the entire time the court has been around. I just know the
| media has suddenly gone after the justices since the courts
| majority changed from liberal to conservative for the first
| time in its existence.
| chrisoverzero wrote:
| > [...] changed from liberal to conservative for the
| first time in its existence.
|
| Not at all: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_era
| pyth0 wrote:
| The parent could be referring to Justice Clarence Thomas
| and his well-documented past of accepting expensive
| things from Republican billionaires. [1] [2]
|
| [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-
| scotus-un...
|
| [2] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/09/new-filings-
| reveal-...
| burningChrome wrote:
| While willfully ignoring Sotomayor's own checkered past?
|
| _" Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor reportedly
| accepted nearly $2 million from Penguin Random House in a
| book deal, and then went on to sit in judgment of a
| copyright case involving that same company the following
| year."_
|
| https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/may/4/sonia-
| sotoma...
|
| Or the way she prodded institutions where she spoke to
| buy her books?
|
| _" Sotomayor's staff has often prodded public
| institutions that have hosted the justice to buy her
| memoir or children's books, works that have earned her at
| least $3.7 million since she joined the court in 2009."_
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/07/11/1187005372/sonia-
| sotomayor-su...
|
| Pot meet Kettle. Kettle meet Pot.
| pyth0 wrote:
| Those dealings with Sotomayor are obviously sketchy and
| should not be legal, not sure where in the thread you got
| the impression that it was being ignored. But unless you
| are being intentionally dishonest signing a book deal is
| substantially different from receiving all expenses paid
| vacations. And given Thomas' willingness to throw away
| precedent in recent rulings, him receiving gifts in
| exchange for "nothing" puts him under even more scrutiny.
| cortesoft wrote:
| You don't think they can hold the same sway over the
| executive branch?
| burningChrome wrote:
| This is how they've always won.
|
| In 1978 after the oil crisis Carter was already talking about
| getting off of foreign oil, we should develop renewable
| energy resources, be energy independent. Imagine where we'd
| be had we done even a few of the things he suggested?
|
| Instead, the big oil companies, their lobbyists and OPEC made
| sure there would be abundance of cheap oil and then everybody
| just moved on and forgot about the long lines waiting for
| gas, rationing and other horrible stuff the oil crisis
| brought.
|
| Not much has changed over the past 45 years which is pretty
| depressing.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Uh, ironically, the recently-overturned _Chevron_ was at
| the time a big win for Chevron, the oil company, because
| SCOTUS required courts to defer to President Reagan 's EPA
| which interpreted the Clean Air Act very generously in the
| oil companies' favor even though the courts ruled Congress
| intended stricter regulations. Now everyone is decrying
| _Loper_ saying the EPA should be given nigh-unlimited
| authority since they agree with its policies under
| Administrator Regan. People support empowering whichever
| branch of government agrees with their politics at the
| moment. Things have just completely flipped in the last 40
| years.
| datahack wrote:
| Especially when 1 in 4 congresspeople are still invested in
| the fossil fuel industry. Money talks.
|
| > As of Dec. 13, 2019, 134 members of Congress and their
| spouses own as much as $92.7 million worth of stock in fossil
| fuel companies and mutual funds, according to an analysis of
| financial disclosures by Sludge. House members own between
| roughly $29.5 million and $78.2 million in fossil fuel
| stocks, while senators have between $3.8 million and $14.5
| million invested in oil, gas, and coal interests. Members of
| Congress generally report the value of their investments in
| broad ranges, so it's not possible to know exactly how much
| their stocks are worth.
|
| https://prospect.org/power/members-of-congress-own-up-
| to-93-...
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| You think it's easier to bribe hundreds of people instead of
| one at the top? If it's money in government you're worried
| about, I have bad news for you. Everyone in government is
| susceptible to getting paid off, including (and especially)
| unelected people.
| spencerflem wrote:
| They did, lol, the law was called the Clean Air Act
| immibis wrote:
| But... they did pass that law. It was the Clean Air Act.
| akira2501 wrote:
| We can argue about what they intended, but here is what they
| wrote:
|
| "The term "new source" means any stationary source, the
| construction or modification of which is commenced after the
| publication of regulations (or, if earlier, proposed regulations)
| prescribing a standard of performance under this section which
| will be applicable to such source."
|
| and
|
| "The term "existing source" means any stationary source other
| than a new source."
|
| Finally.. congress didn't hand EPA an unlimited authority to make
| decisions about sources. It handed them a process they must
| follow when it comes to ruling on "new sources."
|
| With a law this complex, I'm not sure you can bring the
| intentions of a single sponsor into the consideration:
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/7411
| spencerflem wrote:
| Man I like hackernews sometimes but y'all have some really dumb
| opinions every time the supreme court or the EPA comes up. I wish
| the whole category could be marked off-topic
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Flag it if you think it's off-topic, nothing is stopping you
| from doing that unless your karma is still too low (yours
| isn't). It'll get off the front page quick with just a few
| flags, though this one is also likely to trigger the flame war
| detector and get pushed down the rankings soon.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Already did, just makes me sad :(
|
| I love tech and software and fiddling with things and the
| beauty and elegance of code and the joy of discovering how
| things work, and the creativity ppl can have. And then
| there's posts like this and its like 'wow, these people suck,
| what am I doing'
|
| Shame too, cuz the article itself is fine
| andrewmg wrote:
| Ah, forgotten records, including the musings of poet Allen
| Ginsburg, provide a secret decoder ring to interpreting the Clean
| Air Act. This is not, of course, how one interprets statutes.
|
| For what it's worth, the linked press release's description of
| the Supreme Court's decision is wrong; the court did not, in
| fact, hold that "Congress had not empowered the EPA to regulate
| greenhouse gases," but that it could not regulate in the manner
| that it did. And, so far as the statute at issue is concerned,
| the evidence is overwhelming that it was never intended to
| empower EPA to restructure the nation's electricity system. I
| wrote a fair bit about this at the time, and was apparently
| persuasive.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1530/204857/202...
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I don't think this is the "bitter medicine" or "hard truths"
| you think it is.
|
| Separately, while it's very interesting that you played a role
| in writing this, and I believe that you're correct in general
| about the errors in the linked articles: despite the fact that
| you are highly experienced, there are still idiots who win
| court cases, even Supreme Court cases, on crap arguments,
| sometimes. However, idiots never become surgeons. In my
| personal experience, I don't know any idiots who also write
| sophisticated software. So this idea that there is some kind of
| objective, apolitical correct interpretation of a statue - that
| the practice of law at the highest levels in trials in front of
| the Supreme Court has this major objective element to it as
| surgery and math does - is kind of bupkis, you are as much
| practicing something imaginary, subjective, political, and
| poetical as the musings of Alan Ginsburg as the professors do.
|
| So what is your opinion: do you really think Supreme Court
| decisions are apolitical? How would you tell the difference
| between a politically motivated decision that uses your
| arguments as a "parallel construction" to support that
| political decision, and a sincere belief that your way of
| reading the statue is objective and apolitical? Because that is
| what people are pissed off about.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I think it's fairly obvious that the court system is more
| metaphysics than physics. Even when the laws are clear, we
| still have politically motivated jurists who will put their
| own denominational spin on the application of said laws.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| Comments like this, where someone who is directly involved and
| deeply knowledgable, randomly jumps in are why I love HN.
|
| People are so fixated on a result (in this case lowering CO2
| emissions) that they can't see past that to consider the actual
| fundamental legal principles of court decisions, especially
| supreme court ones. I see this as a failure of our legislative
| branch, they are incapable of legislating effectively and
| people look to the courts to achieve their desired ends.
| Moreover it seems like people don't consider the negative
| effects if courts decided cases in the other direction (e.g.
| how federal agencies could abuse their authority if Chevron had
| been upheld).
|
| I try to read the actual decisions, especially for Supreme
| Court ones, especially when I superficially disagree with the
| result and I very rarely end up disagreeing with the decisions.
| It's bizarre to me how the media only reports on how they
| disagree with the result (which is a legitimate opinion) and
| completely fail to discuss, debate or report on the legal
| theory behind the decision, they commonly seem to not even
| report on the actual legal question being decided! I have never
| seen a single mainstream news article which correctly casts
| blame on congress for failing to legislate effectively or
| unambiguously.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "It's bizarre to me how the media only reports on how they
| disagree with the result (which is a legitimate opinion) and
| completely fail to discuss, debate or report on the legal
| theory behind the decision"
|
| In a lot of cases, they do more than that and outright
| misrepresent it.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| I was trying to soften my opinion. I very much agree with
| you.
| ant6n wrote:
| > I see this as a failure of our legislative branch, they are
| incapable of legislating effectively and people look to the
| courts to achieve their desired ends.
|
| Uh, the US has a deeply dysfunctional system. It covers most
| aspects of governance, judiciary, legislative, electoral
| system, the fifth estate.
|
| It's entirely reasonable people are only concerned with
| outcomes, and not process.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| The US is not deeply dysfunctional. Some amount of friction
| is built in to put the brakes on any sudden outcropping of
| nonsense from any single element of government.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| While I agree with you in principle, that the friction is
| "as designed," I still say our system is broken -- even
| when there are things which a supermajority of people
| agree on, our legislators are unable to craft solutions
| which align which the majority of people agree with,
| without inserting things which are designed to cater to
| tiny minority special interests, which can effectively
| "poison pill" a bill so that nobody likes it (even if
| it's passed).
|
| Alternatively, we pass giant tomes of legislation (esp
| budgets) which literally nobody can understand let alone
| agree on.
| nradov wrote:
| What are those things on which a supermajority of people
| agree, including implementation details and funding
| sources? Everyone wants more free stuff from the
| government. No one wants to pay higher taxes.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| I agree that we are deeply dysfunctional but it's not about
| "outcomes vs process"
|
| It's a very short-sighted thinking of how the process
| change they want to achieve their outcome today could
| result in someone else using that same process change for a
| very bad outcome in the future.
| shawndrost wrote:
| Thank you for providing your expertise in this comment section.
| A few followup questions, if you will...
|
| 1. Posit for a second that 1970s lawmakers did intend to
| delegate sweeping powers to the EPA under the CAA and allow it
| to regulate CO2 in ways that reshaped the every sector of the
| economy, when the time comes. MQD says the CAA as-written
| didn't accomplish that, regardless of what legislators wanted,
| because the EPA can't decide major questions except where
| legislators clearly scope and delegate that authority. True?
|
| 2. Posit that a supermajority of lawmakers, today, wanted to
| rewrite the CAA to actually delegate those sweeping powers of
| CO2 regulation to the EPA. This would be impossible, because
| it's not possible to enumerate all the major questions, and
| clearly scope and delegate the necessary authority, in order to
| free the EPA's hand across future decades of rulemaking
| impacting every major industry. True?
|
| 3. My sense is that the 2012 EPA rules mostly killed new coal
| plants and doomed existing facilities, practically
| accomplishing the same kind of "generation shifting" described
| in your brief. This seems like the kind of "major question"
| that you argue cannot be decided by EPA rulemaking. Though any
| number of legal and practical facts may shield those 2012 rules
| from post-hoc scrutiny, similar rulemakings today would
| probably not pass muster. True?
|
| 4. What (if any) defensible actions do you think the EPA could
| take, today, to reduce CO2 emissions under authorities granted
| by 111(d) of the Clean Air Act?
|
| Again, thanks for your 2c.
| andrewmg wrote:
| I don't think your second point is correct. Congress could
| most certainly empower EPA to administer a cap-and-trade
| scheme or even some kind of phase-out, as it did with
| (respectively) acid-rain precursors and CFCs. Congress could
| do the same for GHG emissions, without spelling out the
| impact on each and every affected industry or source.
| Congress might, for example, set an economy-wide emissions
| cap, set a schedule of annual caps or a formula, specify how
| EPA should go about determining the cap each year, or some
| combination of those things. If Congress specifies that all
| sources economy-wide (or some subset of them) will be subject
| to a cap, then it has answered the major question.
|
| On your third point, see the paragraph on page 38 of my brief
| linked above. "Generation-shifting," as used in the CPP, was
| EPA's claim that it could set "achievable" emissions
| standards based on turning off a source. One can argue about
| whether new-source standards satisfy the statutory test
| (BACT) applicable to major industrial facilities and whether
| the agency's decision to set those standards at a particular
| level is supported by the evidence or otherwise arbitrary and
| capricious. But that's an entirely different inquiry from
| whether Congress empowered EPA to switch off more or less
| every source of emissions in the country as it so chooses.
| spacebacon wrote:
| Thank you for your public service and agency to bring this to
| the people of HN. Is there anything you would like to say now
| that was not said then?
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