President Joe Biden’s major climate change executive order, which he issued soon after taking office, has been ruled by a federal court in Louisiana. According to Fox Business, U.S. District Judge James Cain has ruled that Biden’s January 2021 order requiring the “social cost” of carbon emissions to be considered when creating new environmental laws is unconstitutional.
Cain concurred with Republican attorneys general from energy-producing states who stated that Biden’s plan to increase carbon emission cost estimates would likely raise energy costs while diminishing state income from energy production.
According to Fox Business, the injunction currently bars the Biden administration from adopting the higher cost estimate, which aims to assign a monetary value to the harm purportedly caused by each additional ton of greenhouse gases spewed into the environment.
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden restored the climate cost estimate to around $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions, after the Trump administration had decreased it to around $7 or less per ton. Former President Donald Trump’s evaluation only included domestic costs, as opposed to the global damages included in higher statistics previously used by the Obama administration.
According to Cain’s ruling, plaintiff states have sufficiently specified the kind of damage that merit injunctive relief. Furthermore, the Court believes that the Plaintiff States have made a convincing showing of genuine loss that cannot be remedied by monetary remedies.
The Court agrees, according to the decision, that the public interest and balance of equities weigh heavily in favor of providing a preliminary injunction. President Joe Biden returned the United States to the worldwide fight to limit global warming in one of his first official acts, and immediately launched a series of climate-friendly policies that would transform how Americans drive and receive power.
Within hours of taking the oath of office, Biden issued an executive order reinstating the United States’ participation in the Paris Climate Accord, fulfilling a campaign pledge.
The ruling overturns President Donald Trump’s withdrawal order, in which he disregarded climate science, eased constraints on heat-trapping oil, gas, and coal emissions, and promoted oil and gas leasing in pristine Arctic tundra and other wilderness regions.
According to Biden’s inaugural address, the cry for survival comes from the land itself. A more urgent and clearer plea could not be made at this time.
Republicans attacked Biden’s quick decision to re-join the Paris Climate Accords, claiming that other large polluters like China and India are unlikely to follow, giving them an economic and developmental advantage.
“The Paris climate accord is built on the backward assumption that the United States is the perpetrator here, when in reality the United States is the primary driver of climate solutions,” said Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso. Indeed, despite Trump’s massive rise in fossil fuel output, total emissions have actually decreased.
