Justices stand in the way of Biden’s climate mission

Latest ruling leaves fewer paths for the president to fulfill his commitment

WASHINGTON — More than 500 days into his presidency, Joe Biden’s hope for saving the Earth from the most devastating effects of climate change may not quite be dead.

But it’s not far from it.

A Supreme Court ruling Thursday not only limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate climate pollution by power plants but also suggests the court is poised to block other efforts by Biden and federal agencies to limit the climate-wrecking fumes emitted by oil, gas and coal.

It’s a blow to Biden’s commitment to slash emissions in the few years scientists say are left to stave off worse and deadlier levels of global warming. And it’s a sign, to Democrats at home and allies abroad, of the dwindling options remaining for Biden to reverse the legacy of President Donald Trump, who mocked the science of climate change. Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees provided half of the affirmative votes in Thursday’s 6-3 ruling.

After the ruling, a veteran Democratic lawmaker acknowledged he saw little hope of Congress producing any meaningful climate legislation, either. “There’s no easy fix from Congress from this mess,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. The foreign allies whom Biden once spoke of leading to a global clean-power transformation are wondering if the United States can even lead itself.

The climate decision in some ways “may have broader impacts at least on the European populace that this is a country that, A: can’t get things done and B: is going in a really bizarre direction domestically,” said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Biden’s EPA still has meaningful moves left to make, but it must move quickly, Eric Schaeffer, a former director of civil enforcement at the agency, said in a statement. Among them: Speed up a new rule limiting carbon pollution from power plants, make long overdue updates to standards on toxic discharges from the plants and move faster to crack down on leaks of climate-damaging methane in natural gas as the Biden administration has already promised.

After Thursday’s ruling, the EPA pledged to put forward a new proposed carbon rule for power plants by early next year.

Biden has pledged to cut the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of the decade and to have an emissions-free power sector by 2035.

“Our fight against climate change must carry forward, and it will,” Biden said in a statement after the ruling that offered no guarantees of success.

His team would “find ways that we can, under federal law, continue protecting Americans” from pollution and climate change, Biden said.

A divided Congress already handed Biden what’s been the worst climate defeat of his term so far when Sens. Joe Manchin,D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., joined Republicans in refusing to pass Biden’s Build Back Better package.