Ever since President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, there have been many in the Warmist community who have freaked out. We get things like
- Action! Brett Kavanaugh would be Scott Pruitt on the Supreme Court – tell your Senator to vote NO!
- How the New Supreme Court Could Halt Climate Action (it certainly wouldn’t stop Warmists from taking action in their own lives, eh?)
- What Brett Kavanaugh on Supreme Court Could Mean for Climate Regulations: subhead – Trump’s Supreme Court nominee has a history of opposing regulations Congress didn’t explicitly authorize. That could be a problem for greenhouse gas policies.
- How Brett Kavanaugh Could Reshape Environmental Law From the Supreme Court (it’s wacky in the article)
Then we have Warmist Robinson Meyer at The Atlantic
Brett Kavanaugh: ‘The Earth Is Warming’
Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court affirms climate change—but that’s not necessarily good news for the EPA.
It probably isn’t surprising that Judge Brett Kavanaugh—a longtime member of the conservative movement whom President Trump nominated to the Supreme Court on Monday—has written about climate change.
What might be surprising is that he says it’s real.
“The earth is warming. Humans are contributing,†he told a federal courtroom two years ago, during a hearing about a major Barack Obama climate policy. “There is a moral imperative. There is a huge policy imperative. The pope’s involved.â€
He’s even inscribed this view in his judicial opinions. “The task of dealing with global warming is urgent and important at the national and international level,â€Â he wrote in 2013.
That’s concerning for me, but, not too much. I agree that humans are contributing, I just see it as minimal and not dangerous. But, Kavanaugh hasn’t ever seen to let his political beliefs get in the way of his rulings, excepting his belief in the Constitution. But, anyhow
Yet this is not necessarily good news for liberals. Kavanaugh has sometimes sympathized with the need for environmental protection. But because he considers global warming to be charged with a “huge policy imperative,†he’s skeptical that the Environment Protection Agency (or the executive branch) should be fighting it alone. And as a future justice, he’s likely to block the agency from doing so.
It is a portentous moment for U.S. environmental law. President Obama spent much of his last term trying to deploy the EPA—and one of its animating laws, the Clean Air Act—against the threat of climate change. The Trump administration has devoted its energy to undoing this work, and environmental groups are trying to block him.
Obama spent time passing shaky regulations that kept getting blocked in court, such as the Clean Air Act, which never went into effect to start with.
“We probably have more of a record for Kavanaugh for environmental law than we do for anyone else in recent memory,†Lazarus told me. “Roberts came from the D.C. Circuit, Scalia came from the D.C. Circuit, Ginsburg did, Thomas did—but none of them had the same number of EPA cases that Kavanaugh’s had.â€
He has not been a friend of the agency, though he often appears sympathetic to it. Kavanaugh has emerged as a courteous jurist who is intensely skeptical of whether the EPA can legally regulate new environmental threats, experts told me.
And, on that record
Kavanaugh is particularly skeptical of new EPA programs. Like Scalia, he argues that the agency should only issue a new rule if Congress granted them explicit, precise rules to do so in a piece of legislation, like the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act.
Well, that’s shocking! A belief that the duly elected Legislative Branch should pass laws that are explicit to get things done, rather than massive mission creep and Executive Office agencies creating rules and regulations out of thin air? That’s totally outside the mainstream!
Adler, the conservative law professor, agreed that Kavanaugh might strike down future climate rules from the EPA.“I get that the environmental community looks at him and says, He’s going to get in the way of aggressive climate regulation unless Congress does something. And he might.â€
“But if climate change is a problem, and it is; and if we should be doing something about it, which we should; then barring some massive technological breakthrough, unless and until Congress steps up to the plate, we’re kind of screwed,†he said.
And rightly so. If Warmists believe so hard, they should make an argument and attempt to pass legislation, not jam it through the EO agencies. And, show us that they really believe by changing their own lives to match their beliefs.
