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A surprise in the presidential debate
By Coral Davenport
In the
homestretch of a 90-minute, insult-laden brawl that only occasionally veered
into detailed policy specifics, Chris Wallace, the moderator of Tuesday night’s
presidential debate, sprang a surprise: Nearly 10 minutes of pointed questions
on a subject that has almost never been addressed in any general presidential
debate.
Climate
change wasn’t even on the menu. Mr. Wallace had not included it on the list of
topics to be discussed.
That fact
has long been seen as a reflection of the perception by political campaigns
that climate change is a second-tier issue, a matter of concern to niche
environmentalists but not to the general public or the crucial swing-state
voters who decide presidential elections.
It would
appear perceptions have changed.
“Climate
change is usually an orphan issue,” said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of
history at Rice University. “The fact that it got raised at all last night is
showing that it’s starting to get some of the national stature it deserves and
is no longer just a niche Democratic left concern.”
The
questions Mr. Wallace asked were pointed and specific, though the answers were
less so. He pressed Mr. Trump to publicly state his specific view on whether
humans contribute to climate change, to which he responded: “A lot of things
do. To an extent, yes.”
Mr. Trump,
as he has before, spoke about his desire for “crystal clean air and water,”
while failing to reconcile those with his administration’s rollback of over 100
environmental rules, many aimed at protecting clean air and water.
Mr. Biden
sought to portray himself as a champion of renewable energy, while at the same
time also attempting to distance himself from the Green New Deal, even though
that proposal has informed his sweeping plan to spend $2 trillion on green
initiatives, an idea that is likely to gain little traction in Congress.
“While it
was great that climate change was raised, it got contaminated by the
insult-mania, with answers kind of ricocheting all over the place and the
public not getting a clear view of how we are going to attack this crisis,” Dr.
Brinkley said.
“But it’s a
good opportunity for moderators to prepare for it to come up in the next two
debates, to try to calm the babble and get more coherent answers about climate
change.”
What a Justice Barrett could mean for climate
By John
Schwartz
President
Trump has nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, and if the Senate confirms her, it will mean a
conservative supermajority of six justices on the court. That could
significantly weaken efforts by government and environmental activists to fight
climate change and clean up the environment, legal experts told me this week.
Judge
Barrett, currently serving on the United States Court of Appeals for the
Seventh Circuit, has not written significant opinions on environmental cases
that reveal her views, but “given that she comes out of a very conservative
tradition and calls herself a Scalia acolyte, I think we can safely assume
she’s not going to be the friendliest justice on the environment,” said Ann
Carlson, who is a director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the
Environment at the U.C.L.A. School of Law.
Justice
Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, was a deeply conservative voice on the court
for three decades. Judge Barrett served as one of his law clerks. She is also a
prominent member of the Federalist Society, a legal group that opposes what it
considers regulatory overreach and has been a wellspring of conservative
judges.
Professor
Carlson suggested that Judge Barrett, if elevated to the Court, would follow
Justice Scalia’s lead in interpreting the Environmental Protection Agency’s
powers narrowly. If former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. wins the
presidential election in November and tries to use the powers of the
environmental agency aggressively with new regulations, she said, “he may face
headwinds in the Supreme Court.”
Along those
lines, Justice Barrett might also join conservative members of the court who
have indicated that they might try to revive what’s known as the nondelegation
doctrine, a principle on the constitutional separation of powers that says
Congress should not give regulatory agencies much leeway in executing policies.
The doctrine has not been used to strike down a statute or regulation since the
1930s, but “If you have six votes, I think it increases the chances” of its
being revived, Professor Carlson said.
Michael
Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law
School, said that if that doctrine was revived, Congress would have to
carefully draft legislation with very specific instructions for agencies to
carry out. “That’s very unfortunate,” he said. “The more specific you get, the
less you can deal with unanticipated circumstances” like an evolving
understanding of environmental threats.
Professor
Carlson suggested that Judge Barrett has also shown skepticism about a major
element of suits by environmental groups: standing to sue. Standing constitutes
the rules of who can bring a lawsuit, and Justice Scalia had long worked to
narrow the rules in ways that could limit access to the courts for environmental
groups. She called his “a pet project.” A Scalia acolyte might try to continue
that work.
Still,
Professor Gerrard said, don’t expect to see a conservative majority overturn
major precedents like Massachusetts v. E.P.A., which gave the environmental
agency the power to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Instead,
he suggested, there could be “attacks on environmental regulations from
multiple angles” that would weaken the law without the tumult of a sweeping
decision.
“It’s like
a swarm of ducks peck at a small animal,” he said. “They may not kill it, but
they leave it limping and bleeding.”
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