In the US so far, efforts to enact legislation in Congress to “save the planet” by restricting fossil fuels and transforming our energy economy have gone nowhere. President Obama’s grand idea of ”limits and trade” legislation died early in his first term and never came to life. President Biden’s “Green New Deal” has so far suffered a similar fate. If Republicans retake even one house of Congress later this year, prospects for legislation on the subject could be dead for years, if not good.
Sure, you might think that, without any legislative support from Congress, the Executive Branch has little or no power on its own to effect a trillion dollar transformation. la of our energy economy. Well, you might think so, and you’ll have the Constitution on your side; But unfortunately for you, the incumbent President and the bureaucracy think otherwise. In their view, “saving the planet” so you have a warm home in the winter is a moral imperative that requires the application of the Constitution and requires them to have the power to force you to do what they say above. all aspects. Only the courts stand in their way.
But in the meantime, under Biden, there’s an all-court body that is conducting the press to do everything they can think of to stop the use of fossil fuels. As discussed here on january 20On his first day in office, Biden issued Executive order 13990make it “Policy of [his] Management” arrive “Reducing Greenhouse Gases,” and direct all agencies to continue implementing that policy. Such efforts are underway throughout the federal bureaucracy, in everything from the EPA to the Department of Energy to the SEC to the Federal Reserve to the Department of Agriculture and many others.
We can all have our favorites among these dozens of rule-free bureaucratic initiatives. But certainly a leading candidate for the worst of the worst is something called the “Social Cost of Carbon” (SCC). If you haven’t heard about it yet, here’s the idea: Since we all know that CO2 emissions and related modern lifestyles are destroying the planet, the administration should therefore declare that these emissions is doing us all harm and puts a tremendous value on that harm, that value is used to evaluate any proposed project, to ensure that in the future there are no major projects Any production or use of fossil fuels can be built or made again. The SCC is not the product of any statutory body, but rather of something known as the “Interdisciplinary Working Group,” or IWG, coordinated outside of the White House.
On Friday, the Federal District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued a preliminary order barring the federal government from using all SCCs pending litigation (or action by an appeals court). ). This is court orderand this is Opinion gives its reason. This Opinion and Order is a clear sign that the bureaucracy can no longer count on the court system as pats to stamp whatever the Left wants at the moment, no matter how absurd and how lawless. For now, this is just a decision of the District Court, and it has a long way to go through the court system before it is up to the test. But for now, Opinion and Order is seen as a major barrier to the Biden Administration’s “green” plans.
I first learned about Social Carbon Costs in June 2016, when Barack Obama was still President, and SCC is a shiny new toy recently invented by the bureaucracy. My post is titled “Annals of Government Fraud.” The post comes as a surprise that the bureaucracy, caught up in anti-fossil fuel hysteria and group thinking, has somehow managed to declare fossil fuels a net negative for humanity , and indeed such a significant net negative that they will find a way to prevent any further development of fossil fuel resources. I note that the benefits of fossil fuels include: “electricity, . . . lighting, telecommunications, computers, smartphones, internet, music, television and movies, refrigeration, air conditioning, tools, appliances, . . . . umbrella cars, airplanes, trains, buses, ships, even motorbikes, . . . mechanized agriculture [which is] the difference between our food supply produced by 2% of the population (as we are today) versus 90% of the population that had to produce food before mechanization. . . . “, etc., etc., etc. Can the use of fossil fuels be a net cost versus net benefit for humanity?
On any conceivable measure of scale, the benefits to humanity from the use of fossil fuels must outweigh the negatives by hundreds if not thousands. The benefits outweigh the costs that the entire effort of trying to quantify and weigh the two can’t really be justified.
Upon taking office, the Trump administration took steps to disable the SCC, so not much has been known about it for a while. But Biden’s EO 13990 caused the Obama-era version to be reinstalled. The people of Biden announced that they were working to further refine the regulations, but in the meantime a large group of Republican-led states have filed lawsuits.
With a regulatory initiative clearly aimed at driving a major transformation of the economy without a statutory basis, the people of Biden defended against Claims using every technique and technique. art known to man. The SCC rules are not “final” as the administration is still working on some more tweaks (and then some more, and then some more); the state’s plaintiffs lack “stand” because the harm is to the citizens and not to the state itself; and from then onwards. The court didn’t have it.
At the heart of the court’s decision was the determination that the SCC falls under the Supreme Court’s “major questions doctrine”, according to which the bureaucracy cannot on its own impose “new obligations of economic significance”. broad economic and political” unless Congress “makes it clear.” The states have identified about 83 pending projects involving something between $447 and $561 billion that are affected by the SCC rule. That impressed the court with ease in its concept of “big questions”. From Court Opinions, pages 30-31:
The complaining States argue that the SC-GHG Estimate concerns an issue of great importance and do not have statutory authority for the Executive to issue the SC-GHG Estimate. The key question doctrine ensures that agencies do not impose new obligations of “broad “economic and political implications”” on private parties and States unless Congress “clearly says .” . . . The claimant states assert that the SC-GHG Estimate would impose significant costs on the economy. The total cost of these 83 management actions [using social costs] is estimated to be between $447 billion and $561 billion (2020 dollars). “Courts found that less expensive and more far-reaching regulations triggered the big question doctrine.
We are at the beginning of a very long battle. The bureaucracy has many ways to take down an opponent.
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