With so much going on in the USA at the moment, it's possible you missed an important US court ruling just before Joe Biden's inauguration.
In 2019, Trump's administration attempted to relax restrictions on power plant greenhouse emissions. In a move that could only harm the environment, the administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lawyers filed a lawsuit that argued that the federal government does not have the authority to set national restrictions on emissions or force states to do so.
In a nutshell, the objective was to repeal Obama's Clean Air Act and allow power plants to operate without rigorous regulation. As New York Attorney General Letitia James put it, this rule only “served to support dirty and expensive coal plants, undercut clean and sustainable electricity, and left New Yorkers and all other Americans to foot the bill.”
OGN is delighted to tell you that the US Court of Appeal struck down the industry-friendly climate rule last week. The court stated that the deregulatory plan was a “mistaken reading of the Clean Air Act,” and that the EPA “fundamentally has misconceived the law.”
With the current EPA rules invalidated, the new Biden administration is off to a flying start and can start introducing strong regulations on emissions from the power sector. That’s very good news, especially when you consider that the Biden administration has promised to cut emissions from the power sector by 32 percent (compared to 2005 levels) by 2030.
Meanwhile, in Florida, a recent retiree is busy phoning around trying to find lawyers to defend him in his forthcoming Senate impeachment trial.
