SCOTUS Allows The EPA To Do Its Job

Serwer highlights some good news for environmentalists coming out of the court yesterday:

Environmentalists scored a big win at the Supreme Court Tuesday when the high court upheld an Environmental Protection Agency rule meant to reduce interstate air pollution. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy sided with the high court’s Democratic appointees. …

States are obligated to meet certain emissions standards under the Clean Air Act, but sometimes pollution from neighboring states affects their ability to meet those standards. Those upwind states are supposed to adopt practices that prevent their pollution from affecting downwind states. That pollution can be nothing short of lethal, a brief filed in the case from the American Thoracic Society noted that “Air pollution measurably and substantially shortens lives.”

Rebecca Leber explains why this matters:

Simply put, the Supreme Court has effectively helped save lives.

The EPA estimated that the rule in question would prevent up to 34,000 premature deaths, 15,000 non-fatal heart attacks, 420,000 respiratory symptom cases, and 400,000 aggravated asthma cases each year, mostly in the states that bear the brunt of the cross-state pollution. With this rule and other EPA air quality regulations still on hold, national air quality has actually grown worse. According to the American Lung Association’s State of the Air report, almost 150 million people breathe unhealthy air in 2014, an increase of 16 million since 2013.

Chait looks to the battles ahead:

The Clean Air Act simply requires the cleanest feasible technology, which would require shuttering all coal-burning plants, imposing huge costs. The EPA wants to tailor its standards to curtail emissions without a blunt-force ban on coal.

Whatever plan emerges will venture onto newer legal ground. Conservatives have adopted the paradoxical strategy of denying the EPA any flexibility to craft regulations, the theory being that forcing it to issue only massively expensive (and therefore politically toxic) regulations will result in them being overridden. Conservative suits to bring about such a result are already heading toward the Supreme Court.

Yesterday’s ruling, which concerns different sections of the Clean Air Act, provides some clues to the Court’s disposition. And for those of us uncomfortable with unleashing runaway temperatures upon future generations, those clues seem encouraging.