"Conservative justices focused on industry costs when blocking the Clean Power Plan, the first climate rule proposed for the power sector."
"When the Supreme Court blocked President Barack Obama’s signature climate regulation a decade ago, conservative justices were worried about the cost to industry, according to private memos reported by The New York Times.
Chief Justice John Roberts called it “the most expensive regulation ever imposed,” repeating a refrain common among critics of Obama’s Clean Power Plan. And although liberal justices argued the rule didn’t require action for several more years, Republican-controlled states and energy industries faced “immediate and significant harm” from having to make plans, Justice Samuel Alito wrote. “And this harm, once incurred, is by nature irreparable.”
Not mentioned in 16 pages of chamber memos from 2016 reported by the Times — documents that were not expected to see the light of day for several more decades — are the costs of not regulating greenhouse gases as they drive global temperatures to rise. The Clean Power Plan, proposed in 2015, aimed to reduce power plant climate pollution 32 percent by 2030."
