Let's Step Up Climate Action
By this time next week, chances are that Amy Coney Barrett will have become the 115th justice to be confirmed to the United States Supreme Court. Which means that by next week, at least one of the court’s nine seats will be held by someone who describes climate change as “a very contentious matter of public debate.” To put it mildly: Yikes!
A quick recap, in case you missed it: During last week’s confirmation hearings, several senators grilled Barrett about her take on the climate crisis. At various points, she responded that she was “not a scientist,” that she didn’t have “strong views on it,” and that she would not “express a view on a matter of public policy, especially one that is politically controversial.” In one particularly jarring interaction with Senator and Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris (D-CA), she refused to say that she accepted the science of climate change — after affirming that she agreed with other well-established scientific findings: that the novel coronavirus is infectious and that smoking causes cancer.
As I watched the hearings unfold, her non-answers landed like punches to the gut.
I couldn’t help thinking about what her confirmation could mean to the growing number of climate cases making their way through the US legal system. If Barrett’s legal philosophy is any indication, the landmark Supreme Court climate case Massachusetts vs. US EPA — which affirmed that states can sue the federal government over its failure to act on climate change (and also established that greenhouse gases could be regulated under the Clean Air Act) — could very well be in jeopardy. Should that case be overturned, it would endanger dozens of state-led climate lawsuits; cases that have often felt to me like bright spots amid the stream of bleak climate news.
Only time will tell how Barrett’s views — legal and otherwise — will impact rulings. As we wait to find out, I take heart in the knowledge that, no matter who sits on the nation’s highest court, cities, and states, and climate warriors are sure to keep up the good fight, both in and out of the courtroom.
Zoe Loftus Farren
Managing Editor, Earth Island Journal
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