The tools available to President Biden to fight climate change are being taken away.
The EPA will no longer have the power to limit carbon dioxide from power plants after the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.
Mr. Biden, who came into office with the most ambitious climate agenda of any president, pledged to the rest of the world that the United States would cut that pollution in half
It will soon be impossible to meet that goal, according to some experts.
David G Victor is an expert in climate policy at the University of California, San Diego.
The consequences could be much worse. The United States needs to hit Mr. Biden's goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. That is the point at which the likelihood of catastrophic impacts increases. The world has warmed by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius.
There have been many obstacles to Mr. Biden's push for climate action, ranging from conflicts within his own party to well-funded legal challenges from the fossil fuel industry.
Patrick Morrisey, the Republican attorney general of West Virginia, said the decision was a great win for the state.
Congress has yet to act on climate change. Legislation to replace coal and gas-fired power plants with wind, solar and nuclear energy was deleted from a major domestic policy bill after objections from Senator Joe Manchin II. The limits of Mr. Biden's legislative ambitions have been set by Mr. Manchin, who has personal financial ties to the coal industry.
An increase in tax credits to spur the wind and solar industries is included in the domestic policy bill on Capitol Hill. It is not clear if Mr. Manchin will support the plan if Republicans regain control of one or both chambers in the election.
Mr. Biden directed the E.P.A. to come up with new limits on tailpipe emissions to speed up the adoption of electric vehicles. Many of the same people who won this week's Supreme Court case are attacking those rules in lower courts.
Mr. Biden promised to end drilling on public lands when he was a candidate. Republican attorneys general from states that produce fossil fuels challenged his attempt to stop new drilling. This week, the administration held its first drilling lease sale.
According to Richard Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard, the judicial branch is making it difficult for Joe Biden to get the job done on climate. A lot of optimism is being replaced by pessimism. Right now, they are running out of options.
According to the Biden administration, it is possible for the US to meet its climate targets by cobbling together a mix of executive actions.
The White House's deputy climate adviser said that you don't walk off the court after the first quarter regardless of whether you're up or down. Until you win, you stay in.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that leaks from oil and gas wells. Mercury, smog and soot are some of the types of pollution that it plans to limit. Coal-burning power plants, which produce more carbon dioxide than gas-fired plants, are thought to be the dirtiest facilities and could be forced to be shut down.
As the air pollution rules are being enforced, they will squeeze out some CO2 pollution, according to a professor at the University of Santa Barbara. The amount wouldn't be the same. We are in a worse situation when we take a tool off the table.
The private sector is moving away from fossil fuels.
In the first quarter of 2022, electric vehicle sales made up about 5 percent of new vehicle sales in the United States, compared with 2.5 percent in the first quarter of 2021. Other carmakers have the same goal of stopping producing gasoline-powered vehicles by the year 2035. More than 200,000 reservations have been made for the electric version of the F-150 pickup truck, which is the country's best-selling vehicle.
With the cost of solar and wind energy dropping below the price of coal and natural gas in many parts of the United States, renewable sources of electricity now make up 20% of the nation's energy mix.
The war in Ukraine and the ban on Russian oil caused global energy supplies to be scrambled and prompted President Biden to call for more oil to be pumped into the market. There are significant obstacles to overcome for clean energy producers in the US.
Scientists say that the private sector is not moving fast enough to cut emissions. Mr. Biden wants half of new cars sold in the US to be electric by the year 2030.
There is a powerful trend emerging in the private sector that is driven by consumers who are demanding cleaner options, that is driving a shift in our energy mix, and toward electric vehicles, but that pace of change is not enough to meet the long-term targets. Policy is still needed for that. The administration doesn't have the right tools According to the scientific community, success requires Congress.
The decision is a key one. A blow to the Biden administration's efforts to address climate change was dealt by a Supreme Court ruling limiting the EPA's ability to regulate carbon emissions. This is what to know.
There is a case. The justices were asked to rule on whether the Clean Air Act allows the E.P.A. to issue sweeping regulations across the power sector.
There is a suspended rule. The Clean Power Plan was an Obama-era federal regulation that sought to regulate emissions from power plants. The program was put on hold by the Supreme Court after it was announced and never took effect.
There are consequences to the stakes. The E.P.A. and other federal agencies that issue regulations that affect the American economy should be set by Congress, according to the lawsuit.
There was a decision. The ruling restricts the ability of the E.P.A. to regulate the energy sector, limiting it to measures like emission controls at individual power plants.
There are further implications. The decision could affect the ability of federal agencies to regulate health care, workplace safety, telecommunications and the financial sector.
There is still time for Congress to pass a scaled-back version of the spending bill. The House passed a bill last year that included $300 billion in clean energy tax incentives.
The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, is in talks with Mr. Manchin about a less ambitious version of the spending bill. The bill must be passed by the 30th of September. The Senate is in recess through the second week of July, and will break again for the month of August, leaving Democrats little time to reach an agreement on a package that has been in the works for a year.
The Supreme Court decision makes the push for that bill more urgent. The decision will put American lives at risk, making it all the more important for Democrats to pass meaningful legislation to address the climate crisis.
Dozens of states are moving ahead with their own climate plans despite the federal government's failure to act. The effects of the state actions being put on steroids will be significant if the federal government realizes its weakness.
More than half of the states have enacted some kind of climate policy. California is expected to finalize a first-in-the-nation regulation in the coming weeks that will require all new cars sold in the state to be electric or zero emission by the year 2035. The same rule is in the works in 17 other states.
100 percent of California's electricity must come from zero-carbon sources by 2045 Twenty-one states have a version of that clean electricity standard, and several are moving legislation to make it even more stringent.
The Democratic governor of California said that the ruling made it even more important that California and other states succeed in their efforts to combat the climate crisis. California is just getting started despite the court turning back the clock.
The power plant case was brought to the Supreme Court by a group of Republican attorneys general. The second-most powerful court in the country, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is where they have already filed a lawsuit. Arguments have not been scheduled.
Ms.Stokes said it was a knife fight. It will get harder because we have to fight with every tool we have.
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