Last week, President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan took a back seat as the US Supreme Court decided to delay implementation of the policy. This plan was supposed to be the key to President Obama’s policy of climate change. His administration had already pledged to cut down greenhouse gas emissions in Paris in 2015.
But President Obama remains optimistic saying that his administration was on the right track and had all the legal backing needed to counter the opposition. In his first public remarks to a group of democratic donors, President Obama stated, “We’re very confident that we’re on strong legal footing here.” At the same time in Washington, DC, Obama’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy, told the environmental and state regulators that the Supreme Court ruling was not going to delay the implementation of the Clean Power Plan.
The President felt that the Supreme Court was not provided with the data on carbon emissions which the US scientists had claimed were harmful to public health. He, however, is still optimistic and feels that his administration is on the right track to get the Clean Power Plan passed.
Gina McCarthy has also told state regulators that she is confident that the Plan will survive any future legal challenges. She told the regulators that they should not lose morale and continue to fight for the country.
The negative set-back by the US Supreme Court is only a minor hiccup for the Obama administration, which has been trying to get the Clean Power Plan off the ground for over a year. If the plan does eventually go through, it will lower the carbon emissions from US power plants by 2030 to less than 32% of what they were in 2005.
The US Supreme Court has delayed implementation until the legal challenges are heard. President Obama has already stated that the Supreme Court has agreed that the Environmental Protection Agency is mandated to regulate emissions if there is a potential threat to the American public. This is President Obama’s last year in office and the climate change policy is one of the agendas on his things to see-through before his departure from office.