American climate agency benched

The US Supreme Court has ruled the government’s key environmental agency cannot issue broad limits on greenhouse gases, sharply curtailing the power of President Joe Biden to battle climate change.

By a majority of 6-3, the high court found that the Environmental Protection Agency did not have the power to set sweeping caps on emissions from coal-fired power plants, which produce nearly 20 per cent of the electricity consumed in the US.

The decision sets back Mr Biden’s hopes of using the EPA to bring down emissions to meet global climate goals, set in 2015 under the Paris Agreement on climate change.

It was a significant victory for the coal mining and coal power industry.

It also marked a victory for conservatives fighting government regulation of industry, with the court’s majority including three right-wing justices named by former president Donald Trump, who had sought to weaken the EPA.

Mr Biden called it “another devastating decision that aims to take our country backwards”.

In the case pitting West Virginia and other coalmining states against the federal government, the court said that while the EPA had the power to regulate individual plants, congress had not given it such expansive powers to set limits covering all electricity generating units.

The majority justices said they recognised that putting caps on carbon dioxide emissions to move away from coal power “may be a sensible solution” to global warming. But they said the case involved a “major question” of US governance with broad consequences, and that the EPA would have to be specifically delegated such powers.

The three-member liberal minority of the court castigated the majority for overruling powers they said EPA did in fact have to address “the most pressing environmental challenge of our time”.

“The stakes here are high,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote.

“Whatever else this court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change.”