The biggest thing a president’s ever done on climate is in the hands of 10 judges
The biggest thing a president’s ever done on climate is in the hands of 10 judges
Revisit the history before the Clean Power Plan goes to court.
Ryan Koronowski
Climate Editor at ThinkProgress. Contact me rkoronowski@thinkprogress.org.
6 hrs ago
The Obama administration’s biggest action to cut carbon emissions from the power sector will get its biggest test next Tuesday when the full en banc D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals hears West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency. The case will decide whether the EPA violated the law when it finalized its carbon rule — the Clean Power Plan — to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector under the Clean Air Act.
This is a significant case, and the D.C. Circuit took the somewhat unprecedented step of having the full court (that’s what en banc means) hear the case instead of the court’s normal three-judge panel — previously scheduled for a hearing last June. This signifies both how important the case is to the court, and that decisiveness could prove elusive in a 4–4 Supreme Court following the death of Antonin Scalia, leaving the D.C. Circuit as potentially the ultimate deciding body.
The case has taken a long and sometimes confusing path to get before the court, and the key components and actors have origins several decades prior to the plan’s eventual creation. Here is a timeline of the key events that brought the United States to this point.
December 2, 1970: Nixon creates the EPA
The Republican president established one federal agency to protect human health and the environment in an executive branch reorganization: the Environmental Protection Agency. Since then, it has been the main federal enforcer of environmental laws passed by Congress.
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https://thinkprogress.org/clean-power-plan-timeline-35f2f073fdb#.mzch38tb5
