News/Commentary

Justice Kagan faces backlash for apocalyptic warning following SCOTUS EPA ruling

July 1, 2022 | | Print Article

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan is facing scrutiny and mockery for warning in a dissent that “parts” of the United States could be “swallowed by the ocean” because of climate change.

“If the current rate of emissions continues, children born this year could live to see parts of the Eastern seaboard swallowed by the ocean,” she wrote in a dissent filed Thursday.

The dissent, joined by both Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonya Sotomayor, was written in response to the majority of the high court ruling in West Virginia v Environmental Protection Agency that the EPA lacks the authority to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions of power producers.

Whereas the court’s conservative majority based their decision on constitutional law — namely the fact that Congress has never granted the EPA the kind of authority it currently seeks — Kagan appeared to base her dissent on fear-mongering theories about the consequences of climate change.

Her fear-mongering attracted scrutiny and mockery, given as climate change fear-mongering has a sordid history of being dead wrong over and over and over again.

Kagan’s dissent contained a flurry of additional theories that didn’t pass the smell test.

Quoting from one of her sources, she claimed “[t]he rise in temperatures” from climate change has triggered “‘increases in heat-related deaths.'”

But charts on the EPA’s own website shows that heat-related deaths have actually declined in the past few decades, despite global temperatures rising.

Kagan also claimed that rising temperatures have triggered “‘more frequent and intense hurricanes.'”

This, too, is debunked by the evidence, according to meteorologist Ryan Maue, PhD.

Next, the Supreme Court justice linked rising global temperatures to “‘potentially significant disruptions of food production.'”

But again she appears to have been completely off the mark.

See more of the claims posited by Kagan below:

It sounds, for all intents and purposes, like Kagan filled her dissent with claims from left-wing climate change activists and then called it a day without actually verifying the veracity of said claims.

Not that any of these claims even mattered. As previously noted, the court’s conservative majority based their ruling on actual constitutional law, not on wild theories, and certainly not on feelings.

“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day.’ New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 187 (1992). But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme in Section 111(d),” they wrote.

“A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is reversed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

Vivek Saxena
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