Re: Energy & the Environment News and Discussions
Posted: Fri May 19, 2023 7:32 pm
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https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/2 ... 81?cid=apn05/25/2023 10:32 AM EDT
The Supreme Court on Thursday significantly shrank the reach of federal clean water protections, dealing a major blow to President Joe Biden’s efforts to restore protections to millions of acres of wetlands and delivering a victory to multiple powerful industries.
The ruling from the court’s conservative majority vastly narrowing the federal government’s authority over marshes and bogs is a win for industries such as homebuilding and oil and gas, which must seek Clean Water Act permits to damage federally protected wetlands. Those industries have fought for decades to limit the law’s reach.
The ruling comes less than a year after the high court issued a contentious ruling restricting EPA’s ability to regulate climate warming gases, and liberal Justice Elena Kagan decried Thursday that the court has appointed “itself as the national decision-maker on environmental policy.”
The 5-4 ruling in Sackett v. EPA creates a far narrower test than what has been used for more than half a century to determine which bogs and marshes fall under the scope of the 1972 law. Under the majority’s definition, only those wetlands with a continuous surface water connection to larger streams, lakes and rivers would get federal protections.
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, wrote in the majority opinion that only those wetlands that are “indistinguishable” from those larger waters should be covered.
(Courthouse News) — A biophysically safe planet cannot exist without justice and equity, scientists say in a new study in the journal Nature that assesses, for the first time, safe and just boundaries for the climate, biodiversity, freshwater and pollution.
The Paris Agreement set a goal of limiting global warming to a temperature increase of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but scientists with the Earth Commission — a global team of natural and social scientists — say the world has already passed what they call the "safe and just climate boundary" of 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Moreover, these scientists say there is also an urgent need to manage a wide array of biophysical systems and processes that determine Earth's habitability beyond climate change.
Human activities have altered the flow of water, released excessive amounts of nutrients into waterways from fertilizer use, and reduced the number of natural areas.
"The results of our health check are quite concerning: Within the five analyzed domains, several boundaries, on a global and local scale, are already transgressed,” said Johan Rockström, Earth Commission co-chair and lead author of the study. “This means that unless a timely transformation occurs, it is most likely that irreversible tipping points and widespread impacts on human well-being will be unavoidable. Avoiding that scenario is crucial if we want to secure a safe and just future for current and future generations.”
A just planet necessarily means there's less available space for humans on it, but justice is necessary for habitability, the study's authors said. That's why they considered how to avoid significant harm to humans and other species as they defined earth system boundaries that built upon what scientists know are the biophysical conditions to maintain a livable, stable planet.