While Donald Trump Was Talking, the Supreme Court Was Putting Our World at Risk
While we were all fascinated by the antics of a vulgar talking yam, the Supreme Court threw a dead fish into the president's efforts to do something (anything!) about the crisis unfolding in the world's climate.
The 5-to-4 vote, with the court's four liberal members dissenting, was unprecedented-the Supreme Court had never before granted a request to halt a regulation before review by a federal appeals court. "It's a stunning development," Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor and former environmental legal counsel to the Obama administration, said in an email. She added that "the order certainly indicates a high degree of initial judicial skepticism from five justices on the court," and that the ruling would raise serious questions from nations that signed on to the landmark Paris climate change pact in December.
Precedent? What is this strange word that you speak, pilgrim?
It's a terrible development in all kinds of ways. It puts the Paris agreement in limbo. It's inherently bad law, which I'll let Lemieux explain. And, of course, I've had several conversations with the sea and it's told me that, rather than taking the time to write an amicus brief, it's just going to keep on rising.
But the worst thing of all is that the ruling is even more evidence that the institutions of our government are not capable of confronting a crisis of this magnitude. The House is hopeless until at least the next census, and probably beyond that. The Senate's a bowl of oatmeal. And the judiciary just squashed the executive's tepid attempts to do something (anything!) about it. It'd be god's own irony if the planet died because there was an excess of democracy. Of course, if the effects get really bad, and populations grow even more desperate about food and water and the outbreaks of epidemic disease, we're not going to have an excess of democracy for very long anywhere on the globe.
