This is an absurd take. All Congress needs to do is clarify that they’d like the EPA to regulate carbon emissions. That’s it. The laws regarding pollution control, many of which date back to the 1950s and 1960s, we’re not written with global warming in mind. So the court is saying the EPA needs to get permission from elected officials to regulate carbon.
And therein lies the problem. We know Congress is too deadlocked to be effective. Does the Court pushing back on them have a shot at getting the legislative branch to do their jobs?
The Court could choose to act with the knowledge that Legislative won't do things, and so behave as the last bastion of relative non-partisanship across the Federal government by allowing the overall public opinion to influence what cases they choose to hear & their eventual outcomes. That would conflict with the letter description of their job, but arguably be in support of the spirit of the system as a whole.
They're not going to go that route, though, it appears.
If Trump ran the executive branch, would you want him pushing through via administrative fiat things that Congress doesn’t want? I certainly don’t want the EPA making policy — I want them doing what Congress explicitly tasks then to do. Same for other agencies. It’s the Major Questions doctrine.
Congress exists for a reason. The executive branch executes the will of the states and people as indicated by Congress. That’s the entire point of Congress.
The deadlock may be intentional, but it cannot be said that this is a desirable mode of operation when comparing to other countries that have much more effective governance and healthier societies.
The US is the world’s oldest democracy in no small part because of that document.
> And I hear Americans saying this nowadays, and there's a lot of it going around. They talk about a "dysfunctional government" because there's disagreement. And the Framers would have said, "Yes, that's exactly the way we set it up. We wanted this to be power contradicting power -- because the main ill that beset us" -- as Hamilton said in The Federalist when he talked about a separate Senate -- He said, "Yes, it seems inconvenient, but inasmuch as the main ill that besets us is an excess of legislation, it won't be so bad." This is 1787 -- he didn't know what an excess of legislation was.
> So, unless Americans can appreciate that and learn to love the separation of powers, which means learning to love the gridlock, which the Framers believed would be the main protection of minorities -- the main protection. If a bill is about to pass that really comes down hard on some minority [and] they think it's terribly unfair, it doesn't take much to throw a monkey wrench into this complex system.
> So, Americans should appreciate that and they should learn to love the gridlock. It's there for a reason -- so that the legislation that gets out will be good legislation.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/antoninscaliaameri...
Pollution may make sense to regular here, but the states / federation needs to have a large majority agree (>60%). You can't have an unelected group of bureaucrats from the EPA dictating that a large number of states can't make money, for instance.
I live in a deeply conservative state, but I spend most of my online time on HN. This puts me in the middle of two vastly different cultures with vastly different sets of values. I have listened to both sides explain their sincerely held views. I have listened to both sides talk about the other side.
Each group will tell me "but those other guys are evil and only want to ____!" Each group then explains their own views, and you know what? Each group's views are rational. Each group's views are compassionate. Both groups really believe that they want what's best for the world, and neither group has thought through their ideas better than the other. Both have severe flaws in their reasoning, but both also really care.
In a word: both groups are human.
I think it would do us all good to assume that most people are acting out of sincerely held beliefs, and that most people really do want to do good. I know there are exceptions, but the world would be a better place if we didn't treat those exceptions as though they were the rule.
I'm attributing the worst to these people, because we know who they are. They want the government to have no ability to at all to put any restrictions on capital at all costs. They're simply doing it now because they have the raw power to do so.
Here, I'll just observe that you're doing it again: you're projecting the worst possible motive on someone else's decision without giving due consideration to why else they might believe differently than you.
The EPA was largely create to regulate pollutants based on laws written in the 1950s and 60s. It's not at all clear that the original lawmakers would consider carbon a pollutant -- it's something you and I are exhaling right at this moment.
So saying that the EPA needs authorization to regulate emissions that can cause climate change seems reasonable to me.
In areas where there's no consensus, sure. Congress is very effective when the parties align. This is government working as intended.
Not being able to bulldoze opposition is very different from existential destruction, or "becoming a non-entity" as was written above.
The government only taking actions supported by a mandate from the people is an ideal result.
This just isn't true. Congress continues to pass thousands of laws a year, in line with their historical trends.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics
Congress is only too deadlocked to be effective on issues that the American people are divided on. And that's basically the point of democracy.
I'm sorry to say that if you want a different set of laws, then you'll need to do the hard work of talking to other voters and convincing them you're right.
> This is an absurd take.
Indeed, OP overstated the reality. If the SC rules all day every day to reduce federal power, it would never be able to keep up with Federal power expansion.
I encourage all the tech people around here to "read the code": https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf
That is one interpretation. The dissenting opinion of Kagan argues that carbon emissions are covered due to Section 111(d), as this covers all pollutants.