<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<font size="+2"><i><b>November 5, 2021</b></i></font><br>
<i><br>
</i><i>[ 20 min video report COP26 ]</i><br>
<b>Nick Breeze ClimateGENN</b><br>
In this episode of Shaping The Future I am inside the COP attending
talks and speaking mainly to scientists but also half listening to
the pledges and commitments being made. What is striking is the
sense of foreboding from people who have followed these negotiations
for many years. <br>
Contents:<br>
00:00 Intro by Nick Breeze<br>
01:00 John Kerry speaking to C40 mayors<br>
01:23 Professor Richard Bamba (excerpt)<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GcSxVHAxW0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GcSxVHAxW0</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[BBC reports]</i><br>
<b>Climate change: Carbon emissions show rapid rebound after Covid
dip</b><br>
By Paul Rincon - Science editor, BBC News website<br>
Published 11-4-21<br>
The amount of planet-heating gas released in 2020 fell by 5.4% as
the pandemic forced countries to lock down.<br>
<br>
But a scientific report by the Global Carbon Project predicts CO2
emissions will rise by 4.9% this year.<br>
<br>
It shows the window is closing on our ability to limit temperature
rise to the critical threshold of 1.5C.<br>
<br>
This rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere
underlines the urgency of action at summits like COP26 in Glasgow,
scientists say.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59148520">https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59148520</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
<i>[ Poignant action, polite speech ]</i><br>
THE COP26 SUMMIT<br>
<b>A 15-year-old girl invented a solar ironing cart that's winning
global respect</b><br>
November 3, 2021<br>
SUSHMITA PATHAK<br>
Vinisha Umashankar and her solar ironing cart. She came up with the
idea when she was 12 — then worked with engineers to create a
prototype. Now she's in Glasgow, Scotland, to speak at the COP26
climate change conference.<br>
<br>
Vinisha Umashankar was returning to her home in southern India from
school a few years ago when she saw a man throwing away burnt
charcoal on the side of the street.<br>
He was an ironing vendor who pressed people's clothes for a living –
and his main appliance was an old-fashioned iron box, which he
filled with hot charcoal that emitted a cloud of smoke. Umashankar
counted at least six such vendors in her neighborhood in the temple
town of Tiruvannamalai alone. She started thinking about how this
was happening across India, where the ironing vendor is a fixture.<br>
<br>
"It made me think about the amount of charcoal burnt every day and
the damage it does to the environment," says the 15-year-old.
Producing and burning charcoal emits particulate matter that
pollutes the air and releases greenhouse gases such as carbon
dioxide, which contributes to climate change.<br>
<br>
So Umashankar came up with an idea. Instead of using charcoal to
heat up the irons, the vendors could use something abundantly
available in India: the power of the sun. Over the span of six
months in 2019, when she was just 12 years old, she designed a cart
that had solar panels to power a steam iron. She pored over
college-level physics textbooks to get an understanding of how solar
panels work. Then, she submitted her concept to the National
Innovation Foundation, run by the Indian government. Engineers there
helped her build the full-scale working prototype and apply for a
patent.<br>
<br>
And so the Iron-Max was born. It's a blue-painted cart shaped like
an iron box with solar panels fitted on its roof. It's attached to a
bicycle to allow vendors to move through the neighborhood to collect
clothes to press. Five hours of bright sunshine is enough to operate
the iron for six hours. The energy can be stored in a battery to
provide power on cloudy days. The cart also has a coin-operated
cellphone and a cellphone charging point where people can pay to
recharge their phones to supplement vendors' earnings...<br>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>[ Poignant speech ]<br>
<b>Vinisha Umashankar | World Leaders Summit #COP26</b><br>
Nov 2, 2021<br>
Earthshot Prize<br>
The remarkable 15-year-old Vinisha Umashankar, Earthshot Prize
Finalist to Clean our Air, addressed World Leaders today at
#COP26.<br>
<br>
In her powerful speech updating<br>
President John F. Kennedy’s Moonshot speech for a new
generation, she invited world leaders,<br>
international organisations, civil society, and business
leaders to stand with her generation and back<br>
the innovatio<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvLD6waVlkk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvLD6waVlkk</a> ...<br>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
Umashankar was 8 when she first learned about climate change and
says it has had a huge impact on how she thinks about innovation.
She's exasperated by how the world shrugs off environmental issues
as if they are someone else's problems.<br>
<br>
"All of us should understand that environmental issues are real and
can't be fixed at a later date," says Umashankar. "There is no stop
button. There is no magic fix."...<br>
- -<br>
An encyclopedia that was gifted to her when she was 5 sparked
Umashankar's passion for science. She wants to become a scientist
and invent products to help protect the environment for future
generations. She also aspires to invent a single flu vaccine that
can protect against all cold viruses. If it works out, she says
she's pretty confident she'll win a Nobel Prize.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/03/1050227033/a-15-year-old-girl-invented-a-solar-ironing-cart-thats-winning-global-respect">https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/11/03/1050227033/a-15-year-old-girl-invented-a-solar-ironing-cart-thats-winning-global-respect</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<i>[ See Congress's Build Back Better Bill all 2135 pages, and one
spreadsheet ]</i><br>
<i> </i>RULES COMMITTEE PRINT 117–18<br>
<b>TEXT OF H.R. 5376, BUILD BACK BETTER ACT</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/BILLS-117HR5376RH-RCP117-18.pdf">https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/BILLS-117HR5376RH-RCP117-18.pdf</a><br>
- - <br>
[ spreadsheet of major expenditures]<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oAy7k0Zi1Ei9K-30-_bEjfj8FS84CPyUaFmMytZSj4c/edit#gid=0">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oAy7k0Zi1Ei9K-30-_bEjfj8FS84CPyUaFmMytZSj4c/edit#gid=0</a><br>
<p><i><br>
</i></p>
<p><i><br>
</i></p>
<i>[ Political training and policy making - Australia ]</i><br>
<b>The Politics of Climate Change | Steve E. Koonin</b><br>
Oct 21, 2021<br>
John Anderson<br>
As world leaders, including PM Scott Morrison, prepare to attend the
2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, there is
mounting pressure for governments to apply a net zero energy policy
by 2050.<br>
<br>
In this interview, John talks with Steve E. Koonin, a theoretical
physicist and policymaker, about the future of energy and the
politics of climate change. Steve reflects on how the politicisation
of climate science has led to a lack of transparency regarding
climate statistics.<br>
<br>
From 2009 to 2011, Steve served as the Under Secretary for Science,
Department of Energy in the Obama Administration. Steve now works as
director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York
University and as a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban
Engineering at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.<br>
<br>
Steve is also the author of two books. His recently published book,
Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why
It Matters, was a Wall Street Journal Bestseller.00:00 Introduction<br>
<blockquote>3:35 Are humans to blame for climate change?<br>
11:52 The Problem with Climate Modelling<br>
21:29 The Costs & Benefits of Climate Policy<br>
27:47 The Future of Renewable Energy<br>
34:19 Adaptation and Climate Change<br>
42:49 Net Zero: Is it Possible?<br>
</blockquote>
Conversations feature John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of
Australia, interviewing the world's foremost thought leaders about
today's pressing social, cultural and political issues.<br>
<br>
John believes proper, robust dialogue is necessary if we are to
maintain our social strength and cohesion. As he puts it; "You
cannot get good public policy out of a bad public debate."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_g3DuNnDT8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_g3DuNnDT8</a><br>
<br>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
<i>[ politics for university students ] </i><br>
<b>Day 3 - Matthew Paterson: The centrality of politics to climate
change and the problem of climate...</b><br>
Oct 5, 2021<br>
Institut des sciences cognitives - UQAM<br>
<br>
ISC 2021 Summer School – Cognitive Challenges of Climate Change <br>
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://sites.grenadine.uqam.ca/sites">https://sites.grenadine.uqam.ca/sites</a>...)<br>
<br>
Day 3 <br>
Talk by Matthew Paterson: The centrality of politics to climate
change and the problem of climate politics<br>
MC: Nadia Seraiocco, Lecturer and Ph.D candidate, Écoles des médias,
UQAM<br>
<blockquote><b>Abstract:</b><br>
Integrating the social sciences into knowledge production about
climate change is widely recognized as difficult, for various
reasons. But political science presents a particular sort of
problem for such integrated knowledge production. When produced
for policy-oriented processes, where policy-makers may themselves
get to revise and approve the text of a document (as is the case
for IPCC reports), knowledge focused on explaining and evaluating
the performance of political systems on climate change is a
particularly difficult sell. Policy-makers are reluctant to accept
analyses that explain why their country has worse performance than
another. This presentation focuses on this twin character of
political science knowledge on climate change: everyone knows
politics is central to how effectively we respond to climate
change, but everyone has institutional incentives to avoid talking
about it. It also outlines the central elements of how we should
understand the political dynamics of climate change.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwpVA2_gs_k">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwpVA2_gs_k</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ stress and anxiety - a press release ] </i><br>
<b>The American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica are pleased
to present Mental Health and Our Changing Climate, </b>a report
publishing on November 4, 2021 that chronicles the impacts of
climate change on Americans’ mental health and psychological
well-being and provides guidance and resources to act and advocate.
The report builds on the celebrated 2017 edition to include the
latest research and expanded sections on populations
disproportionately impacted, climate anxiety, and a spectrum of
solutions. Join us on November 4 to hear the major findings of this
report from the authors and to preview the action steps for
communities, individuals, practitioners, and policymakers...<br>
- -<br>
The American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica are pleased to
offer Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Inequities,
Responses. This report is an update to the 2017 report, Mental
Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and
Guidance. It shares the latest and best knowledge on the many ways
that climate change impacts mental health individually and
community-wide, how structural inequities cause certain populations
to be impacted first and worst, and the spectrum of solutions
available to build resilience, strengthen care, and inspire
engagement for transformative progress. It is intended to further
inform and empower health and medical professionals, community and
elected leaders, and the public to understand and act on solutions
to climate change that will support mental health and well-being. <br>
<br>
It is past time to focus attention on the far reaching toll climate
change is already taking on our mental health, as the economic,
political, environmental and health implications of climate change
affect all of us. It is time to face feelings of helplessness,
fatalism, and resignation that may be keeping us and our nation from
properly addressing the core causes of climate change and bringing
forth solutions. <br>
<br>
Now is the time to care for our mental health and our climate, and
we can...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://ecoamerica.org/mental-health-and-our-changing-climate-2021-edition/">https://ecoamerica.org/mental-health-and-our-changing-climate-2021-edition/</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
<i>[Read the full report ]</i><br>
<b>MENTAL HEALTH AND OUR CHANGING CLIMATE</b><b><br>
</b><b>IMPACTS, INEQUITIES, RESPONSES</b><br>
2021 Edition<br>
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5<br>
I. CONTEXT 9<br>
Our Changing Climate: A Primer 10<br>
How Climate Change Impacts Personal And Public Health 12<br>
Mental, Physical, and Community Well-Being: Links to Inequity
16<br>
Climate Change Concerns In The United States 18<br>
A Closer Look: The Fight For A Livable Future 19<br>
Psychological Barriers To A Proactive Response 20<br>
Climate Attitudes That Can Spur Action 22<br>
Climate Solutions Benefit Mental Health 24<br>
II. THE MENTAL HEALTH IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE 26<br>
Introduction 27<br>
Impacts Of Severe Weather And Disaster Events 28<br>
A Closer Look: American Youth: Angry, Terrified, And In Despair
32<br>
Impacts of Longer-Term Climate Change 33<br>
Climate Anxiety 37<br>
A Closer Look: A Solution For Climate Anxiety: Spending More Time
In Nature 39<br>
III. HOW INEQUITY IS EXACERBATED BY CLIMATE CHANGE 40<br>
Populations Disproportionately Impacted By Climate Change
41<br>
A Closer Look: Natural Connections: Collaboration With The
Environment 45<br>
A Closer Look: Lessons From COVID-19 48<br>
IV. PROMOTING AND BUILDING RESILIENCE 49<br>
Resilience Defined 50<br>
A Closer Look: Arts, Parks, and Climate Resilient Communities
51<br>
Guidance To Support Individual Resilience 52<br>
Guidance For Strengthening Community Resilience 55<br>
A Closer Look: Community Hubs 61<br>
V. ACCELERATING CLIMATE SOLUTIONS TO SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH
62<br>
The Urgent Need For Climate Policy And Investment In The United
States 63<br>
Climate Solutions To Protect Mental Health 64<br>
What Individuals Can Do 66<br>
What Mental Health Professionals Can Do 68<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://ecoamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/mental-health-climate-change-2021-ea-apa.pdf">https://ecoamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/mental-health-climate-change-2021-ea-apa.pdf</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ alternative viewpoints ] <br>
</i><b>Climate change isn’t the problem, so what is?</b> <br>
By William Rees <br>
Thanks to friend and retired blogger Gail Zawacki at Wit’s End for
bringing this excellent new talk by professor William Rees to my
attention.<br>
<br>
Rees discusses our severe state of ecological overshoot and the
behaviors that prevent us from taking any useful action to make the
future less bad.<br>
<br>
Rees thinks there are two key behaviors responsible for our
predicament:<br>
<br>
Base nature, which we share with all other species, to use all
available resources. Most people call this the Maximum Power
Principle.<br>
Creative nurture. Our learned culture defines our reality and we
live this constructed reality as if it were real. “When faced with
information that does not agree with their [preformed] internal
structures, they deny, discredit, reinterpret or forget that
information” – Wexler.<br>
I don’t disagree with Rees on the existence or role of these
behaviors, but we also need Varki’s MORT theory to explain how
denial of unpleasant realties evolved and is symbiotic with our
uniquely powerful intelligence, and other unique human behaviors,
such as our belief in gods and life after death...<br>
- -<br>
Some interesting points made by Rees:<br>
- The 2017 human eco-footprint exceeds biocapacity by 73%.<br>
- -Half the fossil fuels and many other resources ever used by
humans have been consumed in just the past 30 years.<br>
- Efficiency enables more consumption.<br>
- The past 7 years are the warmest 7 years on record.<br>
- Wild populations of birds, fish, mammals, and amphibians have
declined 60% since 1970. Populations of many insects are down about
50%.<br>
- The biomass of humans and their livestock make up 95-99% of all
vertebrate biomass on the planet.<br>
- Human population planning has declined from being the dominant
policy lever in 1969 to the least researched in 2018.<br>
- The annual growth in wind and solar energy is about half the total
annual growth in energy. In others words, “renewable” energy is not
replacing fossil energy, it’s not even keeping up.<br>
- The recent expansion of the human enterprise resembles the “plague
phase” of a one-off boom/bust population cycle.<br>
- 50 years, 34 climate conferences, a half dozen major international
climate agreements, and various scientists’ warnings have not
reduced atmospheric carbon concentrations.<br>
- We are tracking to the Limit to Growth study’s standard model and
should expect major systemic crashes in the next 40 to 50 years.<br>
- This is the new “age of unreason”: science denial and magical
thinking.<br>
Climate change is a serious problem but a mere symptom of the
greater disease.<br>
P.S. Stay for the Q&A session, it’s very good.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://un-denial.com/2021/02/06/by-william-rees-climate-change-isnt-the-problem-so-what-is/">https://un-denial.com/2021/02/06/by-william-rees-climate-change-isnt-the-problem-so-what-is/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ Yikes! Long article... is this possible or just conjecture? ]</i><br>
<b>A new Supreme Court case could gut the government’s power to
fight climate change</b><br>
Neil Gorsuch’s dream case could be the Earth’s nightmare.<br>
By Ian Millhiser Nov 3, 2021<br>
<br>
The Supreme Court announced late last week that it will hear four
very similar cases — all likely to be consolidated under the name
West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency — which could prove
to be some of the most consequential court decisions in recent US
history.<br>
<br>
That’s a bold statement, so allow me to explain.<br>
<br>
The cases are the latest chapter in the seemingly never-ending
litigation over the Clean Power Plan, arguably former President
Barack Obama’s boldest effort to fight climate change. Though the
plan was never implemented, it still exists in a zombie-like state.
A federal appeals court decision revived the plan last January, but
the Biden administration said in February that it would not
reinstate Obama’s policy.<br>
<br>
Even though it’s no longer likely to be implemented, the petitioners
in the West Virginia case — red states, energy companies, and owners
of coal mines — are fighting to get the Court to rule that the
federal Clean Air Act does not authorize Obama’s plan. More
importantly, they call for new limits on the Clean Air Act that
would severely restrict the Environmental Protection Agency’s
ability to reduce greenhouse emissions in the future.<br>
<br>
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. At least some of the parties
in the West Virginia litigation claim that it is unconstitutional
for the EPA to take the sort of aggressive strides against climate
change that the Obama administration took in its Clean Power Plan.
This theory wouldn’t just strip the EPA of much of its power to
fight climate change, it could potentially disable Congress’s
ability to effectively protect the environment.<br>
<br>
And even this description of the West Virginia litigation doesn’t
fully capture the stakes. The most aggressive arguments against the
Clean Power Plan wouldn’t just apply to environmental regulations —
they could also fundamentally alter the structure of the US
government, stripping away the government’s power on issues as
diverse as workplace safety, environmental protection, access to
birth control, overtime pay, and vaccination.<br>
<br>
In this scenario, hundreds of laws could be weakened or even
deactivated. Many of them would be gone for good, and reenacting any
of these laws would require passing legislation through a bitterly
divided Congress.<br>
<br>
So West Virginia is a monster of a case — potentially the
culmination of a conservative vision incubated at the Federalist
Society for years, and long championed by conservative activists
such as Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Indeed, a
majority of the Court has already expressed sympathy toward
Gorsuch’s plans to shrink the power of federal agencies, which is a
strong sign that the West Virginia petitioners are likely to prevail
on at least some of their claims.<br>
<br>
In the worst-case scenario for the Biden administration, the West
Virginia case could make President Joe Biden the weakest president
of the United States in over 80 years, and it could give a Supreme
Court dominated by Republican appointees a veto power over huge
swaths of federal policy.<br>
<br>
Buckle up. Because the United States will be a very different place
if the Court’s right flank gets its way in West Virginia.<br>
<br>
The West Virginia litigation seeks to permanently entrench Trumpian
environmental policy<br>
The heart of the West Virginia case is a conflict between Obama’s
environmental policy and the policy advanced by his successor,
former President Donald Trump. The red states, power companies, and
mining interests behind this lawsuit all hope to entrench Trump’s
policies — potentially forever.<br>
<br>
The Clean Air Act requires certain power plans to use the “best
system of emission reduction” that can be achieved using existing
technology, while also taking into account factors such as cost.
This scheme raises an obvious question: Who shall determine what,
exactly, is the “best system of emission reduction” at any given
moment?<br>
<br>
Under the Clean Air Act, the answer to that question is the
Environmental Protection Agency. It’s the EPA’s job to study
changing technologies, determine when a new breakthrough should be
adopted by power plants, and to order those plants to use that
technology by issuing binding regulations. (Under certain
circumstances, a power plant does not have to use the exact same
technology preferred by the EPA. But power plants that use
alternative methods typically will only be allowed to do so if they
can achieve the same levels of emission reduction that would be
achieved using the EPA’s methods.)<br>
<br>
The Clean Power Plan didn’t simply call upon coal-firing power
plants to install devices that would make them burn more
efficiently. It also called for power plants to shift away from coal
and toward cleaner methods of generating energy, including both
natural gas and methods that produce no emissions at all, such as
solar.<br>
<br>
The West Virginia petitioners claim that EPA cannot require such a
shift. And these parties have always been likely to prevail before a
judiciary dominated by Republicans. In 2016, just days before
Justice Antonin Scalia’s death briefly denied Republican appointees
a majority on the Supreme Court, the justices voted 5-4 to halt the
Clean Power Plan.<br>
<br>
For a while, the Clean Power Plan’s opponents had powerful allies,
in Trump and his EPA. In 2019, Trump’s EPA announced a new policy,
euphemistically known as the “Affordable Clean Energy” (ACE) rule,
which replaced the Clean Power Plan with much weaker rules.<br>
<br>
The Trump-era rules urged coal plants to install technologies, such
as upgraded soot-blowers and boiler feed pumps, which could
marginally reduce emissions — and that’s pretty much it. As a
federal appeals court explained in an opinion striking down these
rules, “the EPA predicted that its ACE Rule would reduce carbon
dioxide emissions by less than 1% from baseline emission projections
by 2035.” And even that prediction was optimistic. Trump’s EPA
acknowledged that its recommended technologies might wind up
increasing emissions because they would reduce the cost of producing
energy with coal.<br>
<br>
This appeals court opinion is now being reviewed by the justices in
West Virginia, and the various parties that brought this case urge
the Court to state definitively that the Clean Power Plan is not
allowed. Such a decision is likely to fundamentally alter the EPA’s
powers in ways that could make it very difficult for the Biden
administration — or any future administration — to abandon Trump’s
policies.<br>
<br>
<b>How federal agencies shape policy</b><br>
The Clean Air Act relied on a type of governance that is ubiquitous
in federal law. Congress lays out a broad policy — in this case,
that power plants must use the “best system of emission reduction” —
and then delegates to the EPA the task of implementing that policy
through a series of binding regulations.<br>
<br>
Countless federal statutes rely on a similar structure. The
Affordable Care Act, for example, requires health insurers to
provide certain preventive treatments — such as birth control, many
vaccinations, and cancer screenings — at no additional cost to
patients, and it delegates the task of determining which treatments
belong on this list to experts at the Department of Health and Human
Services. The Department of Labor may raise the salary threshold
governing which workers are eligible for overtime pay, in part to
keep up with inflation.<br>
<br>
There are several reasons why this sort of governance, where a
democratically elected legislature sets a broad policy and then
delegates implementation to a federal agency, is desirable. For one
thing, Congress is a dysfunctional mess. If a new act of Congress
were required every time environmental regulators wanted power
plants to install new technology, it’s likely that those plants
would still be using devices that were on the cutting edge in 1993.<br>
<br>
Delegating power to agencies also ensures that decisions are made by
people who know what they are doing. Imagine, for example, if
Congress had to pass a law every time the Food and Drug
Administration wants to make a new drug available to the public.
Even if Congress had time to vote on such a decision, most members
of Congress know very little about biology, chemistry, or medicine.<br>
<br>
Delegation also insulates important decisions from political
horse-trading. The decision about whether to approve a new drug
should be made by scientists in the FDA, not by lawmakers who might
be concerned that the drug’s manufacturer is in Arizona, and that
they need to butter up Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) to secure her vote
for the Build Back Better Act.<br>
<br>
Nevertheless, a majority of the Supreme Court is very hostile to the
idea that federal agencies should be allowed to set policy, and at
least five justices have signaled that they want to revive a largely
defunct constitutional doctrine known as “nondelegation.”<br>
<br>
<b>Nondelegation, explained</b><br>
Nondelegation is the idea that the Constitution places strict limits
on Congress’s ability to delegate power to federal agencies.
Although the Supreme Court briefly wielded the nondelegation
doctrine to strike down New Deal policies that gave a simply
extraordinary amount of regulatory power to President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, this doctrine largely lay dormant for generations.
Indeed, for many years, the Court’s decisions typically emphasized
how reluctant judges should be to second-guess agency regulations.<br>
<br>
During the Obama administration, however, the Court’s right flank
started agitating for limits on agencies’ authority that haven’t
been seen in generations. Under the strongest form of the
nondelegation doctrine, the version advocated by Justice Clarence
Thomas in a 2015 opinion, agencies are simply forbidden from issuing
binding regulations of any kind. Thomas believes that any
governmental decision that “involves an exercise of policy
discretion” also “requires an exercise of legislative power.”<br>
<br>
So laws like the Clean Air Act are forbidden, if Thomas gets his
way. If the United States wants to require coal plants to install a
new device that will reduce emissions by 2 percent, Thomas would
require Congress to enact a new law.<br>
<br>
Most of the justices are unlikely to go that far, but a majority of
the Court has rallied around the approach Justice Neil Gorsuch laid
out in his dissenting opinion in Gundy v. United States (2019). A
federal law authorizing an agency to regulate, Gorsuch wrote in
Gundy, must be “‘sufficiently definite and precise to enable
Congress, the courts, and the public to ascertain’ whether
Congress’s guidance has been followed.”<br>
<br>
This vague new standard is inconsistent with the framers’
understanding of the Constitution. Early American lawmakers — many
of whom were the same people who drafted the Constitution —
delegated tremendous power to executive branch officials.<br>
<br>
Moreover, Gorsuch’s approach would effectively consolidate an
enormous amount of power within the judiciary. When the Supreme
Court hands down a vague and open-ended legal standard like the one
Gorsuch articulated in his Gundy opinion, the Court is shifting
power to itself. What does it mean for a statute to be “sufficiently
definite and precise” that the public can “ascertain whether
Congress’s guidance has been followed”?<br>
<br>
The answer is that the courts — and, ultimately, the Supreme Court —
will decide for themselves what this vague language means. The
courts will gain a broad new power to strike down federal
regulations, on the grounds that they exceed Congress’s power to
delegate authority.<br>
<br>
And Gorsuch would also apply this rule retroactively to statutes
drafted long before the Court’s decision in Gundy — an approach with
profound implications for the West Virginia case. The section of the
Clean Air Act at issue in West Virginia was enacted in 1970.<br>
<br>
Perhaps, if the Nixon-era Congress had known it needed to write that
law with greater precision, it might have drafted it in a way that
Gorsuch would deem acceptable (although it is unclear whether judges
like Gorsuch would deem any meaningful environmental protection
regime acceptable). But it’s simply unreasonable to expect lawmakers
in 1970 to comply with a rule announced by a dissenting justice in
2019.<br>
<br>
Gorsuch’s approach to nondelegation, in other words, wouldn’t simply
strip Congress of much of its power to delegate authority to
agencies. It would allow the most conservative panel of justices to
sit on the Supreme Court since the early days of the Franklin
Roosevelt administration to run roughshod through decades of federal
statutes, invalidating or severely weakening hundreds of provisions
drafted at a time when the nondelegation doctrine was widely viewed
as a crankish notion that was correctly abandoned in the 1930s.<br>
<br>
West Virginia contains the seeds of a constitutional revolution. It
could, as Roosevelt warned in 1937, enable the Supreme Court to
“make our democracy impotent.”<br>
<br>
<b>A more moderate approach that still isn’t especially moderate</b><br>
In 2016, when Obama was still president and Kavanaugh was still a
lower court judge, the DC Circuit Court heard another case involving
the Clean Power Plan, which was also known as West Virginia v. EPA.
At the time, Gorsuch was also still a lower court judge, and the
nondelegation doctrine was still just a reactionary idea touted at
Federalist Society conferences.<br>
<br>
And yet, then-Judge Kavanaugh also suggested at oral arguments in
this first West Virginia case that the Clean Power Plan must fall.
He rested his arguments largely on something known as the major
questions doctrine.<br>
<br>
This doctrine derives from the Supreme Court’s decision in FDA v.
Brown & Williamson Tobacco (2000). Although federal law gives
the FDA broad authority to regulate drugs and devices used to
deliver drugs, a 5-4 Court concluded in Brown & Williamson that
this power does not extend to tobacco.<br>
<br>
Though courts should typically defer to an agency’s regulatory
decisions, Brown & Williamson concluded that “in extraordinary
cases ... there may be reason to hesitate before concluding that
Congress has intended” to delegate authority to a federal agency. In
asserting the power to regulate tobacco, the Court claimed, “the FDA
has now asserted jurisdiction to regulate an industry constituting a
significant portion of the American economy.” Congress, moreover,
had previously “rejected proposals to give the FDA jurisdiction over
tobacco.”<br>
<br>
So, in light of that history, the Court determined that the federal
law permitting the FDA to regulate drugs should not be read so
broadly as to allow it to target nicotine.<br>
<br>
Although Brown & Williamson placed a great deal of emphasis on
the fact that Congress had rejected prior efforts to allow the FDA
to regulate tobacco, the Court expanded the major questions doctrine
in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA (2014). Under Utility Air,
any significant regulation pushed out by an agency is potentially
suspect, regardless of whether Congress had given some outward sign
that it disapproved of that regulation.<br>
<br>
“We expect Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an
agency decisions of vast ‘economic and political significance,’”
Scalia wrote for the Court in Utility Air. The Court, in other
words, imposed a new restriction on Congress. It could delegate
broad powers to agencies, but any statute that did so had to be
written with an unspecified amount of precision. And courts were
free to invalidate regulations if they deemed the statute
authorizing that regulation to be insufficiently precise.<br>
<br>
The major questions doctrine is, in some ways, weaker than the
nondelegation doctrine. For one thing, it doesn’t purport to be a
constitutional doctrine. Because nondelegation claims that there are
constitutional limits on Congress’s ability to delegate power, it is
likely that justices loyal to this doctrine would declare some
delegations invalid no matter how carefully Congress drafted a law.
The major questions doctrine, by contrast, theoretically can be
overcome by precise draftsmanship.<br>
<br>
After Brown & Williamson was decided, for example, Congress
enacted the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of
2009, which explicitly gave the FDA the power that the Court denied
it in 2000. At least so far, the Court has permitted the FDA to
regulate tobacco under this statute.<br>
<br>
But the major questions doctrine also suffers from many of the same
problems as nondelegation. It is vague, so judges can easily read
their policy preferences into decisions challenging agency
regulations. And it changed the rules governing statutory drafting
long after many important laws were enacted.<br>
<br>
Again, if Congress had known, in 1970, that it had to draft the
Clean Air Act in a certain way to prevent the Supreme Court from
dismantling the EPA’s powers, it could have done so. It’s simply not
reasonable to expect Congress to comply with a rule of statutory
construction invented decades after Congress enacts a law.<br>
<br>
Doctrines like nondelegation and major questions, in other words,
threaten to retroactively undo decades of legislation. And, while
these doctrines might hypothetically permit Congress to restore at
least some old laws by enacting new versions that comply with the
new rules, the filibuster all but ensures that no bill will become
law.<br>
<br>
Now, the Supreme Court appears likely to wield these doctrines to
invalidate key provisions of the Clean Air Act. That means the
federal government may soon have to fight climate change with both
hands tied behind its back. And, if the Court does invigorate these
doctrines, countless other laws could be next on the chopping block.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/3/22758188/climate-change-epa-clean-power-plan-supreme-court">https://www.vox.com/2021/11/3/22758188/climate-change-epa-clean-power-plan-supreme-court</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<i>[The news archive - this is the 56th Anniversary]</i><br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming
November 5, 1965</b></font><br>
<br>
November 5, 1965: President Johnson's Science Advisory Committee
issues a report, "Restoring the Quality of Our Environment," that
cites the hazards of carbon pollution.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/nov/05/scientists-warned-the-president-about-global-warming-50-years-ago-today">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/nov/05/scientists-warned-the-president-about-global-warming-50-years-ago-today</a>
<br>
- -<br>
<i>[ Not many people have read this document - some brilliant minds
wrote this original report -- 348 pages scanned ]</i><br>
<br>
<b>Restoring the quality of our environment. Report</b><br>
[ especially see #34 (p.16) ]<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4116127&view=1up&seq=13">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4116127&view=1up&seq=13</a><br>
<i>[ We used to have such a great government ]</i><i><br>
</i>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/</p>
<br>
/Archive of Daily Global Warming News <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html"
moz-do-not-send="true"><https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html></a>
/<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote</a><br>
<br>
/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request"
moz-do-not-send="true"><mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request></a>
to news digest./<br>
<br>
- Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only. It does not
carry images or attachments which may originate from remote
servers. A text-only message can provide greater privacy to the
receiver and sender. This is a hobby production curated by Richard
Pauli<br>
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for
commercial purposes. Messages have no tracking software.<br>
To subscribe, email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated
moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote"
moz-do-not-send="true">contact@theclimate.vote</a> <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote" moz-do-not-send="true"><mailto:contact@theclimate.vote></a>
with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, subject: unsubscribe<br>
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote</a><br>
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://TheClimate.Vote"
moz-do-not-send="true">http://TheClimate.Vote</a> <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://TheClimate.Vote/"
moz-do-not-send="true"><http://TheClimate.Vote/></a>
delivering succinct information for citizens and responsible
governments of all levels. List membership is confidential and
records are scrupulously restricted to this mailing list.<br>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>