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The US Supreme Court is Operating Like a Rogue EPA

Union of Concerned Scientists

The plan cuts power plant and industrial ozone pollution that wafts from central parts of the nation into eastern states. According to the American Lung Association, nearly 120 million people in the nation—one of every three—lives with unhealthy levels of particle and ozone pollution. A 40-year-old Supreme Court ruling (Chevron v.

Ozone 194
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Pollution Control as Climate Policy

Legal Planet

The Biden Administration is slowly grinding away at an important regulatory task: reconsidering the air quality standards for particulates and ozone. The Administration has also announced that it intends to reconsider the ozone standards. For instance, a preliminary staff report on fine particulates (PM2.5) is over 600 pages long.

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EPA’s Power Plant Carbon Rules Are Critical—and Complex. Here’s What to Know, and What to Watch.

Union of Concerned Scientists

A multi-decade legal history, including four Supreme Court decisions, has led to unimpeachable clarity on this one point: EPA has a statutory obligation to regulate carbon emissions from power plants under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act. EPA ruling, EPA can still establish rigorous carbon emissions standards.

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Why I Was Wrong About Methane

Legal Planet

Because methane contributes to ozone pollution, emissions cause immediate health effects as well as warming effects. If we can slow warming a bit, even if we end up in the same place ultimately due to carbon emissions, that gives us more time to prepare for what’s coming down the road. According to the U.N., “a

Politics 227
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Unraveling LA’s Hydrogen Combustion Experiment

Legal Planet

This is partly because hydrogen production is energy inefficient and––when derived from fossil fuels––still a significant source of carbon emissions. By combusting hydrogen, these natural gas plants would stay online, but they would have a somewhat smaller carbon footprint, and could provide firm energy to meet demand.

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Should New Gas Stoves Be Banned?

Union of Concerned Scientists

Like nitrogen dioxide, methane combines with other pollutants to form ground-level ozone—more commonly known as smog—and it is a significantly more potent global warming pollutant than carbon dioxide. A 2022 Sierra Club investigation , for example, found nearly 400 methane leaks in Washington, D.C., in just one day.

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After the Court Rules: Gaming out Responses to a Cutback in EPA Authority

Legal Planet

Such a ruling would leave EPA with very little power to cut carbon emissions from the power sector in a direct way. One workaround would be for California to sharply increase the stringency of its regulations for particulate and ozone-producing emissions by vehicles, which it would still have the right to do.