The Supreme Court just gutted a major policy tool the US might have used to tackle climate change. Its decision today on West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency <\/em>essentially says that the EPA shouldn\u2019t be allowed to determine whether the US gets its electricity from clean or dirty sources of energy.<\/p>\n

That derails previous efforts by the agency to transition the US away from fossil fuels to clean energy sources like wind and solar by regulating the power sector. With the new decision, the agency might be able to push a power plant to install technology to reduce its emissions on-site, but it can\u2019t influence states\u2019 decisions on where they get their energy from in the first place. To make things worse, the premise of the court\u2019s decision could erode any federal agency\u2019s ability to regulate industry in order to tackle climate change and even other major issues. <\/p>\n