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Environmentalists fear Supreme Court’s greenhouse gas ruling will be ‘deadly’

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Environmentalists fear Supreme Court’s greenhouse gas ruling will be ‘deadly’

Jul 02, 2022 | 8:00 am ET
By Dana DiFilippo
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Environmentalists fear Supreme Court’s greenhouse gas ruling will be ‘deadly’
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Joanne Pannone, left, of Robbinsville, joined about 20 people who rallied outside the Clarkson S. Fisher federal courthouse in Trenton on July 1, 2022, to protest the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that limited the government's authority to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

One day after the U.S. Supreme Court limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants, environmental and political leaders in New Jersey warned the decision will accelerate climate change and threaten a century of environmental progress.

About 20 environmentalists rallied Friday outside the Clarkson S. Fisher federal courthouse in Trenton to call on Congress to do more to protect the climate and clean energy.

“Yesterday, the court ruled that the government does not have the authority to protect the very air we breathe,” said Allison McLeod, public policy director at the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters. “The challenges from climate change are here. It’s not a future problem. It’s a problem right now. And every day that we fail to act, climate change becomes more costly, more dangerous, and more deadly.”

Thursday’s ruling caps a stunning few weeks of rulings that overturned abortion rights, strengthened gun rights, and eroded the separation of church and state.

Environmentalists fear Supreme Court’s greenhouse gas ruling will be ‘deadly’
About 20 people rallied outside the Clarkson S. Fisher federal courthouse in Trenton on July 1, 2022, to protest the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that limited the government’s authority to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy responded to the ruling by vowing to step up the state’s efforts to combat climate change and repeating his goal to make the state’s economy wholly reliant on clean energy by 2050.

“Throughout the past week, the Supreme Court’s far-right majority has made it abundantly clear: governments can control women’s bodies, but not the guns that endanger our communities or the polluters who imperil the future of our planet,” Murphy said in a statement. “In the wake of yet another tragic ruling, we will continue to do everything in our power to combat the climate crisis and preserve New Jersey’s environmental and public health.”

In the latest case, the court’s conservative majority decreed that Congress empowered the EPA only to narrowly regulate the emissions of individual power plants, not to create industry-wide caps on emissions from coal and gas power.

Critics warned the decision paves the way for the court to further limit the regulatory power of other agencies.

“Make no mistake, with this devastating ruling in West Virginia v. EPA, the conservative majority of the court continues to take our country backwards, and more worrisome, it opens the door to far-reaching implications for how other federal agencies generally create regulations to implement existing legislation moving forward,” U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Environmentalists who rallied in Trenton Friday also said they fear a case the court hasn’t yet ruled on could endanger the nation’s waterways. That case, which centers on the scope of wetlands protected under the Clean Water Act, could prompt the court to drastically narrow the definition of federally protected waters.

“We’re looking ahead to see how this might impact clean water,” said Eileen Murphy, vice president of government relations with New Jersey Audubon. “Regulations work. We know from decades ago, when there weren’t any, how dirty our air and water was. Regulations came about, and now we enjoy relatively clean air and clean water.”

Environmentalists fear Supreme Court’s greenhouse gas ruling will be ‘deadly’
Brian Russo of Wayne joined about 20 people to rally outside the Clarkson S. Fisher federal courthouse in Trenton on July 1, 2022, to protest the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that limited the government’s authority to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

New Jersey’s environmentalists have accused the Murphy administration of failing to do enough in the fight against greenhouse gas emissions.

In January, they sued the Murphy administration for not doing enough to reduce emissions, and in February, they urged the state Department of Environmental Protection to strengthen its emissions rule on power plants. That proposed rule still hasn’t been adopted.

Thursday’s ruling complicates things, said the Sierra Club of New Jersey’s Anjuli Ramos.

“To actually address climate change holistically, you require federal, state, and local action,” Ramos said. “Rolling it back on a federal level, it just creates a lot of complications and confusion for the regulatory community.”