Year 2, Month 4, Day 29: Bitch, Bitch, Bitch. All Ya Ever Do Is Bitch.

The WaPo opines on the Supreme Court’s likely dismissal of the states in AEP vs. Connecticut:

There’s a good reason that common law is displaced when the political branches speak. It’s not the place of unelected judges to determine how to distribute the costs of addressing climate change across the economy. In addition, a series of suits against individual polluters or groups of emitters is likely to result in an inefficient patchwork of judicial remedies, varying in scope and expense. Consistently applied regulation at the EPA is far better.

It’s reasonable to worry that the political branches may ultimately fail to enforce even the EPA’s modest greenhouse gas policies; many Republicans are eager to defund the agency’s efforts. If that happens, the plaintiffs will have a better case than they do now. But no one should wish to see America’s climate change policy made in court.

Which is all well and good, but which raises a very pertinent question. Sent April 19:

Nobody wants America’s climate change policy made in court. We want it made in Congress, preferably by legally elected representatives who are both fully informed about the climate crisis and prepared to jettison partisan ideologies for the long-term good of our nation, our civilization and our planet. Failing that, we want climate change policy made by a scientifically competent regulatory body whose goals are consistent with the agency’s name — that is, Environmental Protection. Involving the judiciary was always a long shot; the Supreme Court’s words on the AEP case are unsurprising. Given that the Legislative branch prefers to deny reality while attempting to restrain the Executive’s authority, and the Judicial branch is disallowed from considering the problem at all, the question is forced upon us: if we cannot cope with the gravest threat humans have encountered in millennia, can the American system of government be reasonably called a success?

Warren Senders