BANGOR DAILY NEWS • July 11, 2022
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision late last month to pare back the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions from power plants reads like an academic treatise devoid of the context of the reality of climate change and its consequences. At issue is the agency’s authority to write rules for power plant emissions. The court’s conservative majority held that EPA had overstepped its authority in requiring power plants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by switching from coal to cleaner sources of electricity. This ruling should be seen as a wakeup call to Congress to take action on “major questions” facing the country, such as climate change.