The Climate Column

Judgement day

Patrick Dunne

As I write, the US Supreme Court has just issued its ruling in the case of West Virginia vs EPA. It's worth your attention because this ruling might be the straw that breaks the climate's back (Aronoff, 2022).

The Court has determined against the Environmental Protection Agency, undermining its ability under the Clean Air Act to regulate emissions from power plants. In turn, this damages the ability of President Biden's administration to legislate for systemic change in the US energy system. It's a truly alarming ruling that benefits— yes, you guessed it —fossil fuel companies and big polluters.

Meanwhile, over in Western Australia, the State Government has recommended a fifty— yes, fifty —year extension to Australia' s biggest fossil fuel polluting plant, run by Woodside Energy (Morton, 2022).

Here in the UK, an embattled Boris Johnson was being urged to drop any remaining promises from COP26— including green levies —in a desperate attempt to salvage his political career. The Conservative Party seems to be reverting to type, with a group of Net Zero Watch right-wing backbenchers determined to, as David Cameron put it, "ditch the green crap" .

All this, as 125 million people suffered under heat warnings across the US last month. New South Wales flooded again, and on and on across the globe. Here, in Edinburgh, the drought is causing gardeners like me to check the skies daily and carry water across the city to sustain our green public spaces.

It's not going great, folks.

There are links between these climate change rulings, vested interests, majority opinion, and the rights of marginalised groups in our global society. The courts, sponsored by corporations and billionaires, are also attacking our rights to live and love. The US Supreme Court has thrown the question of abortion back to individual States, upending fifty years of reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. The same Court has ruled against the right of individual States to legislate against guns. Eroding the separation of state and church, the US legislature seems to be lurching towards a Christian Right ideology, at odds with majority opinion in the US, but in line with the values of an elite, white, ruling class. Writings by Justice Clarence Thomas suggest America should brace itself for further rulings on same sex marriage, rights to contraception, and gay sex.

Our challenge is to create an intersectional movement of justice, compassion, humility, and equality. As climate activists, we must defend our right to protest and use it to support bodily autonomy and abortion rights— both as a climate issue, but also as rights in and of themselves. We should fight for equal rights for our LGBTQ+ siblings just as fiercely as for displaced communities from Kiev to Kenya. Rights taken from one are taken from all, sooner or later.

Our future depends on solidarity with nurses and rail workers, oil workers and trans people, people seeking abortion and those seeking to challenge the government in the European Court of Human Rights. We need to band together to learn, live, and mobilise. We need to create a future that has justice at its core, a future fit to bequeath to the next generation.

References

Aronoff, K. (2022) 'The US supreme court has declared war on the Earth's future', opinion article in The Guardian newspaper, 01.07.22

Morton, A. (2022) 'Western Australia EPA urges 50-year extension of country's most polluting gas project', article in The Guardian newspaper, 01.07.22