Leaked SCOTUS Memos From 2016 Show Alito & Roberts Never Once Considered Costs Of NOT Regulating GHGs, Toxins [View all]

When the Supreme Court blocked President Barack Obama’s signature climate regulation a decade ago, conservative justices were worried about the cost to industry, according to private memos reported by The New York Times. Chief Justice John Roberts called it “the most expensive regulation ever imposed,” repeating a refrain common among critics of Obama’s Clean Power Plan. And although liberal justices argued the rule didn’t require action for several more years, Republican-controlled states and energy industries faced “immediate and significant harm” from having to make plans, Justice Samuel Alito wrote. “And this harm, once incurred, is by nature irreparable.”

Ed. - Ah yes, "irreparable harm" - see also "Planet Earth", Sam.

Not mentioned in 16 pages of chamber memos from 2016 reported by the Times — documents that were not expected to see the light of day for several more decades — are the costs of not regulating greenhouse gases as they drive global temperatures to rise. The Clean Power Plan, proposed in 2015, aimed to reduce power plant climate pollution 32 percent by 2030. “They should have been asking, ‘What are the public benefits from the rule, the costs of blocking the rule?’” said David Doniger, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “And they didn’t even ask.”A spokesperson for the Supreme Court did not respond to requests for comment.

The February 2016 stay of the Clean Power Plan, which came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined to block it, sent shock waves across Washington. It was the first time the high court had stepped in to block a rule before a lower court had been able to rule on whether it was legal. But some of the court’s conservative justices made the case that this was an unprecedented regulation.The case would inevitably end up before the Supreme Court eventually, and there is “a fair prospect for reversal,” Roberts wrote in his initial memo. In addition to casting a skeptical eye on EPA’s authority, Roberts also highlighted the “irreparable harm” the rule’s opponents would face if it wasn’t stayed immediately. Irreparable harm is one of the criteria to staying a regulation under Supreme Court precedent.

Roberts pointed to EPA’s modeling, which indicated the rule would cause a 2 percent decrease in coal production for the power sector in 2016 and 2017 and a 4.3 percent decrease in 2018.“That harm, once incurred, is irreversible,” Roberts wrote. “Given the long lead times and high capital expenditures required for the construction of new plants, once a utility takes steps to comply with the rule its actions are not likely to be undone.” (In reality, coal production dropped 43 percent between 2015 and 2024 in the absence of any regulation, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.)

EDIT

https://www.eenews.net/articles/leaked-memos-show-supreme-court-ignored-climate-dangers-in-obama-regs-fight/