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Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

bbc.com

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Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#791

Post by ChrisLTD »

lolinder wrote: post #757
philosopher1234 wrote: post #699

Every surpreme court article makes me hate this community a bit more. There is far too much obsessing over "their logic is consistent" and far too much intentional ignorance of the fact that they chose which logic to bring to bear on which issues, and that there are many other possible ways to apply consistent logic. Their logic can be consistent and they can still be partisans, looking to implement a specific agenda…

I support this ruling not because I think that the EPA shouldn't have the authority to cap emissions, but because I agree with the Court that Congress never intended to grant the EPA that authority. I believe strongly that the executive authorities--be that police, FBI, NSA, ICE, or EPA--should not have the ability to creatively interpret laws. If we allow them to do that, we open the door to innumerable abuses. So,…

Why should the Supreme Court decide if a government agency has assumed power not granted to it by Congress? Congress still exists, and Congress can always pass a law kneecapping the agency in question.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#792

Post by landryraccoon »

lolinder wrote: post #757
philosopher1234 wrote: post #699

Every surpreme court article makes me hate this community a bit more. There is far too much obsessing over "their logic is consistent" and far too much intentional ignorance of the fact that they chose which logic to bring to bear on which issues, and that there are many other possible ways to apply consistent logic. Their logic can be consistent and they can still be partisans, looking to implement a specific agenda…

I support this ruling not because I think that the EPA shouldn't have the authority to cap emissions, but because I agree with the Court that Congress never intended to grant the EPA that authority. I believe strongly that the executive authorities--be that police, FBI, NSA, ICE, or EPA--should not have the ability to creatively interpret laws. If we allow them to do that, we open the door to innumerable abuses. So,…

I find this argument very unconvincing.

To use an engineering analogy, if the government were a software application, this is very much like a senior engineer going on a major refactor of a production system, causing huge breaking changes for the sake of "principles", without consulting product, CS or QA. For the sake of argument, lets grant that there's some force to those principles. Is that justification for suddenly breaking a system that was working and causing a massive amount of confusion for downstream users that were blindsided and now have to do massive updates of their own?

Okay, now lets suppose that the same senior engineer was secretly (or perhaps even openly) beating the drum for some feature changes behind the scenes, and nobody liked the features he was proposing. Now after the refactor, it turns out that for "technical reasons" the features now work the way HE wanted them to. When asked, he claims it wasn't a political decision, it was driven purely by engineering concerns, "cleaning up tech debt" and so forth, he claims. Might it seem to you that the refactor was just a smokescreen for just getting the feature changes he wanted into production?

If this engineer was at your company, would you keep them on, or fire them as soon as possible?

Now according to your argument, you view SCOTUS as the engineering team, and Congress as the product team. You're saying that ten years after you release a feature, the technical lead can say "Hey, you remember that spec for those features we released to production 10 years ago? I think we did it wrong, we need to refactor it so it works right. Also that was the old engineering lead, and I never liked them anyway. It'll be a major breaking change, but that shouldn't be an obstacle to doing it right this time. Should we ask Product or the Executive team first? Of course not, we know what we're doing."

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#793

Post by Bostonian »

spencerflem wrote: post #744
philosopher1234 wrote: post #699

Every surpreme court article makes me hate this community a bit more. There is far too much obsessing over "their logic is consistent" and far too much intentional ignorance of the fact that they chose which logic to bring to bear on which issues, and that there are many other possible ways to apply consistent logic. Their logic can be consistent and they can still be partisans, looking to implement a specific agenda…

Thank you for saying this, i completly agree. It honestly makes me ashamed to be a programmer associating with this type of person whos completely incapable of understanding even the simplest social issue

Intelligent people can disagree on abortion, gay marriage, gun control, and other issues. People on both sides of these issues can understand them but reach different conclusions based on their values.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#794

Post by chickenpotpie »

the_doctah wrote: post #713
chickenpotpie wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, even if the surpreme court was completely correct to do this: why is this their focus? Why is this so much more important than the the thousands of other cases waiting for their attention?

You ask this like there isn't some long-established, drawn out process for getting a case before the Supreme Court.

And many cases have already gone through this process. This wasn't the only case available for them.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#795

Post by jahewson »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #699

Every surpreme court article makes me hate this community a bit more. There is far too much obsessing over "their logic is consistent" and far too much intentional ignorance of the fact that they chose which logic to bring to bear on which issues, and that there are many other possible ways to apply consistent logic. Their logic can be consistent and they can still be partisans, looking to implement a specific agenda…

I keep seeing this “if you disagree with me you must believe something really bad and I’m going to put those words into your mouth” rhetorical device around. Does it have a name? It’s tedious.

The court’s position that the executive cannot unilaterally govern by bending the rules is a good thing! The problem is that the line they draw is arbitrary - and they just insert their agenda at the boundary.

The perfect thus becomes the enemy of the good, because the court chose a questionable boundary and because the legislature is now responsible for passing the necessary laws - as they should. In reality, they won’t do that, but that’s not the court’s fault.

Now you can certainly make the argument that the court should stick with the precedent of deferring to the executive instead of the legislature (laws after all, cannot anticipate everything and the court can avoid having to create arbitrary boundaries). But that’s a conversation that’s got nothing to do with climate change or any specific outcome.

For comparison, how did you feel about the court deferring to the Trump executive? Was their rule bending something we want to see more of? If a liberal court broke with precedent in the same manner to restrict Trump from doing something crazy, would that be good?

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#796

Post by burkaman »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #762
burkaman wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the dissent and see if you don't find it equally convincing. Supreme Court justices are very smart and very good at their jobs and it's not surprising that pretty much everything they write sounds reasonable and well-argued. Key quote from the dissent: > Section 111 of the Clean Air Act directs EPA to regulate stationary sources of any substance that “causes, or contributes significantly to, air pollution” and t…

So you would be fine with the EPA regulating marijuana?

If they had convincing scientific evidence that marijuana both contributes significantly to air pollution and endangers public health, yes I would be.

Edit: Actually I think the particular Clean Air Act section in question only covers buildings or other "stationary sources", so I don't think marijuana would qualify unless a building was emitting marijuana smoke.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#797

Post by spencerflem »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #784
philosopher1234 wrote: post #699

Every surpreme court article makes me hate this community a bit more. There is far too much obsessing over "their logic is consistent" and far too much intentional ignorance of the fact that they chose which logic to bring to bear on which issues, and that there are many other possible ways to apply consistent logic. Their logic can be consistent and they can still be partisans, looking to implement a specific agenda…

HN is by and large reactionary.

I don't know why you're being downvoted, this is correct. Just offering my support and the knowledge that not all programmers are assholes with more money than sense and a smug superiority that comes from assuming the whole world is an algorithm. Just most of them.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#798

Post by stakkur »

The EPA's power to cut emissions has always been limited. That's always been part of the problem. The current Supreme Court didn't suddenly create those limits, they just adjusted the dial a little.

TL:DR; the EPA has never 'protected people from emissions' well. This article seems to ignore all that history and focuses on the hot take of ruling reactions.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#799

Post by stingrae »

ChrisLTD wrote: post #791
lolinder wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support this ruling not because I think that the EPA shouldn't have the authority to cap emissions, but because I agree with the Court that Congress never intended to grant the EPA that authority. I believe strongly that the executive authorities--be that police, FBI, NSA, ICE, or EPA--should not have the ability to creatively interpret laws. If we allow them to do that, we open the door to innumerable abuses. So,…

Why should the Supreme Court decide if a government agency has assumed power not granted to it by Congress? Congress still exists, and Congress can always pass a law kneecapping the agency in question.

The Supreme Court is supposed to be a check on the Executive and Legislative Branch? In modern times, the Executive Branch assumes much power not explicitly granted to it and it is the job of the Legislative and Judicial branches to keep it in check.

If congress, doesn't like the ruling, it can reverse it in legislation.

Re: Supreme Court limits EPA’s power to cut emissions

#800

Post by 656565656565 »

landryraccoon wrote: post #792
lolinder wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support this ruling not because I think that the EPA shouldn't have the authority to cap emissions, but because I agree with the Court that Congress never intended to grant the EPA that authority. I believe strongly that the executive authorities--be that police, FBI, NSA, ICE, or EPA--should not have the ability to creatively interpret laws. If we allow them to do that, we open the door to innumerable abuses. So,…

I find this argument very unconvincing. To use an engineering analogy, if the government were a software application, this is very much like a senior engineer going on a major refactor of a production system, causing huge breaking changes for the sake of "principles", without consulting product, CS or QA. For the sake of argument, lets grant that there's some force to those principles. Is that justification for sudde…

you find a political argument unconvincing so apply a software engineering analogy
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