Despite the imperative need for the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions globally, the Supreme Court has made the decision to block power plants from being forced to follow to emission limits set out in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan.
The stipulations in the EPA’s plan are not the most popular among those who stand to benefit from the maintenance of the status quo, and as a result “a lawsuit from 29 states, as well as the energy industry” was filed leading to the Supreme Court’s decision. This decision threatens to detract from President Obama’s intentions to cement the United States as a leader in the push to curb greenhouse-gas emissions on a global scale in the wake of the goals decided upon in the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015.
There is a dual problem with the Supreme Court’s decision. The first is how Obama’s potential inability to enact meaningful change in the battle against greenhouse-gas emissions domestically will reflect on his efforts to spearhead the global initiative. The president cannot lead the progression toward change on the largest scale with an unwilling constituency, which leads to the second issue. While opposition to the Clean Power Plan has much to do with its realistic implementation in states heavily dependent on the current energy industry and not necessarily the intention of the plan, the issue has threatened to devolve into partisan conflict that threatens the supposed impartiality of the Supreme Court.
The decision to halt the Clean Power Plan revealed a clear partisan divide in opinion “with all the Republican-appointed justices lining up in a 5-4 vote to halt the regulation,” which is problematic as the highest court in the land is entrusted to arbitrate high-stakes decisions from a vantage point above petty party disagreements. If the Supreme Court cannot be trusted to make unbiased decisions unswayed by the political climate of the time, what stake can we put in the validity of its decision-making? Furthermore, there was no urgency that absolutely mandated the Supreme Court to make its decision on the regulation at this moment, which hints at ulterior motive.
The purpose of the judicial branch of government is to serve as a component in the system of checks and balances that prevent the other two branches of government from overstepping their boundaries and overriding the will of the people. If the Supreme Court is compromised by the very influences it was designed to counterbalance, it will be unable to perform its function. When the decisions made by the Supreme Court are viewed through the same lense in which we view the conflicts of agenda between Democrats and Republicans, it indicates the possibility of failings in our system of governance.