I was reading about the devastating effect Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh could have on the environment. He is against the EPA policies enacted to fight global warming under the Obama administration. At first glance this seems bad to an environmentalist like myself, but when I read his reasoning I understood that he was exposing the whole problem with American politics today. This one example illustrates exactly why we are moving towards an authoritarian state.
Kavanaugh’s reasoning was that the EPA had over stepped it’s bounds, and that the courts shouldn’t approve, or disapprove, the EPA’s decisions without any guidance from Congress.
First, review how it’s supposed to work. Congress makes the laws of the land, the President enforces those laws (does not make them), and the Court decides whether the laws fit within the Constitution and legal framework of our country.
So Obama got elected (he promised change from business-as-usual politics) and part of his charter was to fight global warming. He went to Congress asking for laws to help slow down carbon emissions. But Congress wouldn’t do it. So what was he to do?
He used his power to go to the EPA, which reports to him, and asked them to put in place policies to reduce carbon emissions, which they did.
Well this made him a hero to all the environmentalists who were happy to have a strong executive willing to make things happen, bypassing our dysfunctional Congress.
It also made him the enemy of those whose livelihoods depended on oil and gas.
The strength of Obama as President made him the hero of the left, but the fact that he could use his power like that made the right hate him. They felt had, that Obama had bypassed the normal political process to ram environmental regulations down corporate throats. So they gave a lot of money to the next campaign.
Trump got elected (he promised change from business-as-usual politics) and part of what he promised was to stimulate economic growth by loosening the environmental constraints on oil and gas companies. (It is too easy to slam this as all corporate greed. What is often not pointed out is that a large number of normal people are employed by the oil and gas companies, and many others indirectly benefit, such as truck drivers, the people working at the corner gas station and Northerners heating their homes in winter.)
He wanted Congress to act. But guess what? They didn’t.
So he used his power to go to the EPA, which reports to him, and asked them to abandon regulations on emissions and open up more public lands for drilling.
This made him a hero to all the leaders and followers of corporate America. And an enemy of anyone who cares about the climate and the planet we live on.
So again, authoritarian moves by the President are loved by all those who agree with his/her agenda, who are glad to see the circumvention of Congress to get something done, and hated by those who see an authoritarian figure bypassing the proper legislative channels.
So is it legal for the president to use his/her power like that? Well that’s often sent up to the Supreme Court to decide. And the politics of the issue, such as EPA climate change regulations, often overshadows the general legality which is really all the Court should be considering. If the courts don’t support the EPA actions, does that mean the courts don’t support the issue, be it emission controls or expanded drilling? Or that they don’t support the way the issue was handled?
You can expect the Supreme Court nominee to be grilled on opinions on climate change, when in reality, that should never be what’s on the Court’s mind. That’s not their job. Whether regulations were done within the framework of our Constitution is what the Court should be concerned with.
The only reason it’s not is because Congress doesn’t do its job. If Congress passed laws regarding global warming and oil and gas exploration, then the President wouldn’t have to go around Congress, and the Supreme Court wouldn’t have to decide on the most contentious issues of the day.
If Congress did its job, senators and representatives from different states, with different priorities would work together to come up with legislation that balanced the needs for environmental protection with the need for corporate growth.
If Congress would do it’s job, the people wouldn’t be so frustrated with the government, and wouldn’t elect presidents who they expect to act in authoritarian ways to get things done.
If Congress was doing it’s job, the political fights would all be at the state and local level as people elected those to represent them in Congress. There wouldn’t be one winner-take-all battle for the presidency.
But Congress isn’t, and the populace is going to keep leaning towards more and more authoritarian leaders. And you can be sure, those leaders are going to do everything in their power to solidify their hold on government, like make sure they get Supreme Court justices that won’t overturn their actions.
Good article. One point, however, the global warmists deny debate by name-calling (“denialists”). That is a red flag that they are merely political. The same mainstream warned of “The Coming Ice Age” decades earlier. I checked NYC’s annual sea level log and sea levels have risen 2mm per year for 200 years. No logarithmic rise in the last few decades. Gore launched his famous film (Inconvenient truth) on a very hot summer with full media support. Seemed like a scheme. The war on carbon emission is fundamentally a promotion of nuclear power. Solar chips OK, but windmills generate high EMF and drive neighbors sick.