Koch Machine Pressing Supreme Court To Crush EPA
Charles Koch (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Dark money groups funded by the fossil fuel billionaire are lobbying justices to block the agency from limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
by ANDREW PEREZ
Dark money groups bankrolled by billionaire Charles Koch are lobbying the Supreme Court to limit environmental regulators’ power to reduce carbon emissions, according to filings reviewed by The Daily Poster. The new pressure campaign follows the conservative oil tycoon using his political network to help install Donald Trump’s three ultra-conservative justices on the court.
Later this month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency. The case could decide whether the EPA is allowed to issue rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — and comes at a time when scientists are warning that governments must rapidly decarbonize the planet in order to avoid catastrophic weather-related impacts from climate change.
If the court sides with the Koch groups, the chief environmental regulator in one of the world’s largest carbon-emitting nations would be barred from enacting many policies to combat climate change.
The Koch network helped arrange the court’s current composition — and now at least five nonprofits tied to Koch have filed amicus briefs in the West Virginia case pressing justices to determine that the agency does not have the authority under the Clean Air Act, the landmark 1970 air quality law, to set new limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Fossil fuel interests are hoping that the Supreme Court will deliver “a broad rule that the EPA can’t use the Clean Air Act to tackle any significant new problem without going back to Congress each time for new, and very detailed, legislation,” noted David Doniger, senior strategic director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate & Clean Energy program. “They’re counting on lobbyists and dark money to keep Congress gridlocked, so that those new laws are impossible to pass.”
There’s little chance that Congress will step in to fill the regulatory void if the Supreme Court guts the Clean Air Act. Democrats spent most of last year debating and ultimately failing to pass a climate spending bill. If the party loses control of Congress this year, Democrats likely won’t be able to pass any substantive new climate measures for the rest of the Biden presidency.