Decisions, Decisions: How The Supreme Court Is Decimating Our Democracy One Decision At A Time

 Today, The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Clean Air Act didn't apply to carbon dioxide and therefore can't be regulated by the EPA. “Hard on the heels of snatching away fundamental liberties, the right-wing activist court just curtailed vital climate action,” Jason Rylander, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, responded in a press statement Thursday. The court ruled that only Congress can make laws regarding the level of CO2 emissions. Interestingly the case came to the court due to then-president Trump trying to relax the guidelines which a federal court put a hold on. The result of this ruling is likely to create a free-for-all among states who want to loosen the law versus those who wish to strengthen it. In the meanwhile, global climate change continues and temperatures and sea levels are rising. “Today, the court strips the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the power Congress gave it to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the minority joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent.

The decision is impactful to the EPA's ability to do its job. Whether it is limiting emissions from power plants to operating the existing cap-and-trade carbon offset policy, it may also give a peek into other backward steps the court and its conservative majority likely will take. “Congress did not grant EPA in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act the authority to devise emissions caps based on the generation shifting approach the Agency took in the Clean Power Plan,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, which was joined by the five other conservative justices. Further, he added, “On EPA’s view of Section 111(d), Congress implicitly tasked it, and it alone, with balancing the many vital considerations of national policy implicated in the basic regulation of how Americans get their energy,” Roberts wrote. “There is little reason to think Congress did so.” In instances like this, he said, “[a] decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.” 

Regardless of this decision, the Environmental Protection Agency was formed to serve as the watchdog over the nation's environment and enact policies to preserve it, but you would think that this was some kind of fly-by-night operation that requires Congress to hold its hand to do its job. Also, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are a little difficult to maintain when the court is treating people like the frogs in the warm water experiment. Suffice to say, with the slew of recent decisions that have been handed down by this court, democracy as we know it is likely to fail us. It would seem like nobody can wrestle the steering wheel away from these unelected lifers, but the court could be expanded to lessen their impact.

Backing Off Backlash

Isaac Newton's 3rd law of motion is "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction". Where social movements are concerned, for every Black life that matters, there is a Blue life that matters. More broadly, for every progressive step forward, there is a regressive step backward. And so it goes on in equilibrium and disequilibrium. Everybody feels backlash, but not everybody experiences it personally or as deeply. Why is this?

I think that it is largely socioeconomic--the whiter and richer you are, the more insulated you are from the effects of backlash. The so-called cancel culture is real, but it is a two-sided coin.  Left- and right-winged people cancel on a regular basis, but the idea of cancel culture is owned by the right-leaning folks by the way they frame it. Cancel culture from the left to them is anti-freedom, but when they do it, it is pro-freedom. Kind of slick to use the idea of freedom as a bludgeon and a value, right?

The corrosive thing about backlash is that it cedes no middle ground. It takes complex ideas and complex people and reduces them to doing good or evil. Well-meaning people can do and say very uninformed things and can even act in ways that are heinous in the eye of the beholder. But rather than to see it as a moment to clarify and educate, quite often, it is a moment of condemnation. While I believe that there are absolutely good reasons to ultimately condemn others who are creating real harm, in most cases, there is room for helpful dialogue.

So how do we go from the backlash to finding common ground? First, we recognize that canceling others is a politically motivated act; that is, we hold our viewpoint to be superior to another no matter what because our side is right and they are wrong. What if both of our viewpoints are flawed? Two, we recognize our humanity--we are all people who have pain points and each of us makes our stands based on what we know or are told. Third, we have a common enemy--misinformation. If we are using the same information, then our reactions are based on our philosophical differences, not the source of information.

Will this be easy? I'll readily agree it will not be. For one reason, we lack trust and everything ultimately can be politicized or worse, turned partisan. This is why I think it has to begin with pairs of differing people rather than a large group process. Trust in a group is harder to form than a one-on-one interaction. I think back to the former governor of Alabama, George Wallace, a staunch segregationist, who ultimately renounced his position largely due to the efforts of Shirley Chisholm who visited him after he survived an assassination attempt and shocked him by being at his side despite his stances.  Through this encounter, his stances drastically changed to the point that, in his last term as governor, he nominated a record number of Black people to state commissions and renounced segregation. Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. Rather, it means that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning. Forgiveness means reconciliation, a coming together again. Without this, no man can love his enemies.”