Environmentalists said they welcomed the pause in new leases and permits, but feared Judge Cain’s ruling would ultimately weaken the government’s ability to enact aggressive climate policies.
“It’s a mixed bag,” said Brett Hartl, director of government affairs at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “They’re going to have to issue the leases at some point and they won’t be able to use the social cost of carbon.”
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who has called the social cost of carbon “voodoo economics,” argued that Mr. Biden overstepped his authority by applying the social cost of carbon to decision-making. He was accompanied by the Attorneys General of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Judge Cain sided with the Republican Attorney General, arguing that using carbon social costs is unconstitutional because Congress has never passed legislation allowing it.
Yet Congress has passed virtually no legislation on how a government should conduct economic analysis, something it has done for decades. In a statement mocked by some lawyers, the judge cited a “separation of powers clause” in the Constitution. There is no such clause.
“That term, in my opinion, is one of the most embarrassing parts of a very embarrassing opinion,” said Amit Narang, an expert on federal regulatory issues at the government watchdog group Public Citizen. He called the judge’s opinion “a partisan political hit disguised as a legal opinion.”
The decision has meanwhile brought an abrupt end to the work of the administration. According to an email from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department warned that other policies could also be delayed. An organization opposed to tackling climate change, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wants the EPA to repeal new regulations on vehicle tailpipe emissions, arguing its analysis using the social cost of carbon is now flawed based on the ruling from Judge Cain.
