Lawrence Bender, the Oscar-winning producer who worked with former Vice President Al Gore on “An Inconvenient Truth” 16 years ago, on Thursday blasted the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision to weaken the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
“With this, and their rulings on guns and abortion, this Supreme Court is taking us back to the Middle Ages,” Bender told TheWrap, referencing the high court’s other high-profile decisions to overturn the constitutional right to abortion and to strike down laws limiting the carrying of guns outside the home.
“The majority of the population realizes that we have to do something about climate change and greenhouse gases,” Bender said. “The best thing you can do is get out and vote.”
In a 6-3 ruling backed by the court’s conservative majority, the Supreme Court struck a blow to President Biden’s climate change policies by restricting the EPA’s ability to act on its own to regulate power plants and carbon emissions under the 1963 Clean Air Act — insisting that Congress must write specific legislation to achieve those goals.
“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day’,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.”
Writing the dissenting opinion for the court’s three liberal members of the court, Justice Elena Kagan said the ruling denies the EPA “the power to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.”
“Whatever else this court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change,” Kagan wrote. “And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the court today prevents a Congressionally authorized agency action to curb power power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions.”
