After challenging the right to abortion, the U.S. Supreme Court has severely limited the means available to the federal government to fight against greenhouse gases.
A White House spokesman denounced Thursday “another devastating decision by the Court (Supreme) that aims to take our country backwards,” after the institution weakened the environmental regulation power of the federal state. U.S. President Joe Biden “will not hesitate to use his statutory authority to protect public health and address the climate change crisis,” according to a short statement released to the press.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday through a spokesman that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling limiting the federal government’s ability to fight global warming marked a “step back” in addressing the environmental crisis. “We can say that this is a step backward in our fight against climate change, when we are already far behind in achieving the goals of the Paris agreement” adopted in 2015, the spokesman noted in a statement.
In its ruling Thursday, the high court found that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could not issue blanket rules to regulate emissions from coal-fired power plants, which generate nearly 20 percent of the electricity in the United States.
