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      John R. Froines, Chemist and Member of the Chicago Seven, Dies at 83

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      After his acquittal for inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, he became a leading environmental toxicologist, shaping government standards on lead and diesel exhaust.John R. Froines, a quiet but politically stalwart chemist who stood trial alongside six other antiwar activists — known collectively as the Chicago Seven — on charges of conspiring to incite a riot during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and who went on to become a pioneering advocate for environmental justice, died on Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 83.His wife, Andrea Hricko, said the death, at a hospital, was caused by complications of Parkinson’s disease.A recently minted Yale Ph.D. on his way to teach chemistry at the University of Oregon, Dr. Froines found himself drawn into the swirl of antiwar activism building up to the Democratic convention, to be held in August 1968 at Chicago’s International Amphitheater.Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis, two of the protest organizers, knew Dr. Froines through his work in Connecticut with the New Haven chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, and they invited him to join their inner circle.During the convention, tens of thousands of protesters marched in the streets and hundreds were arrested during violent clashes with the Chicago Police Department. But only eight were indicted under federal charges of crossing state lines to incite a riot; they included Mr. Hayden, Mr. Davis and Dr. Froines, who was also charged with building an incendiary device, accused of having shown three women how to make a stink bomb.Police clashing with protesters during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 28, 1968. Associated PressSeveral of those charged were already famous as radical activists and counterculture provocateurs. Bobby Seale had co-founded the Black Panther Party in 1966; Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, co-founders of the Youth International Party, or the Yippies, were renowned for antics like dropping wads of cash onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange from the visitors gallery.The defendants were originally known as the Chicago Eight, but became the Chicago Seven when the judge in the case, Julius Hoffman — no relation to Abbie — had Mr. Seale legally severed from the group to be tried separately. (In an extraordinary move, the judge had earlier ordered Mr. Seale bound and gagged for several days in the courtroom after Mr. Seale’s repeated protests over his treatment by the court. He was later jailed for contempt.)Though the men stood in solidarity, Dr. Froines stuck out as particularly straight-laced and earnest, especially in contrast to the likes of Mr. Hoffman, who treated the trial with comic disdain, putting his feet on a table and referring to Judge Hoffman as his illegitimate father.“John was straight,” Lee Weiner, one of the defendants, said in a phone interview. “I’m not going to say we didn’t get along, because that’s not true. But I never had an impulse to say to John, ‘Let’s go smoke some dope.’”Despite what many saw as clear bias against the defendants by Judge Hoffman, in 1970 the jury acquitted Dr. Froines and Mr. Weiner of all charges. An appeals court later dismissed most of the charges against the others.Dr. Froines, left, in 1969 with Tom Hayden during their high-profile trial.David Fenton/Getty ImagesDr. Froines eventually returned to academia, then worked for several years in Washington for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Under his direction, the agency wrote the first regulatory guidelines for non-carcinogenic toxins like lead and cotton dust, setting the stage for dramatic increases in workplace and public health.He did much the same at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he moved in 1981. He directed numerous university research centers and sat on the state’s scientific review panel for air quality.And he engaged with communities hit hard by industrial pollution and smog, tailoring his research to their needs and even accompanying neighborhood groups to meet with government and corporate officials.“When you walk into a room with an internationally recognized expert on an issue, it makes a difference,” Angelo Logan, co-founder of one such organization, the California-based East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, said in a phone interview. “John’s work was driven, driven to make real differences in people’s lives.”Dr. Froines addressing a crowd at the University of Washington in 1970. After his acquittal in the Chicago Seven trial, he continued his antiwar activism. UPIJohn Radford Froines was born on June 13, 1939, in Oakland, Calif. His father, George, a shipyard worker, was murdered when John was 3, leaving his mother, Katherine (Livingston) Froines, a teacher, to raise him and his brother, Robert, by herself.After graduating from high school, he joined the Air National Guard, then earned an associate degree from Contra Costa Community College. He went on to the University of California, Berkeley, where he received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1962.It was at Yale, where he pursued a doctorate, that he first became involved in politics. He started as a moderate, chairing the university chapter of Students for Johnson during the 1964 presidential campaign.But, like many young people, he soured on the president after Johnson followed his landslide victory that fall with a massive expansion of the war in Vietnam. Mr. Froines joined the local branch of S.D.S., helping to organize poor white and Black residents in the city’s Hill neighborhood.He met his first wife, Ann (Rubio) Froines, through the organization. They later divorced. In addition to his wife, Ms. Hricko, he is survived by his daughter, Rebecca Froines Stanley, and his son, Jonathan.After his acquittal, Dr. Froines resigned from his position at the University of Oregon to continue his antiwar activism. He went back to New Haven to support the Black Panther Party during a series of trials against Mr. Seale and others, and in 1971 he helped organize the May Day antiwar protests in Washington, D.C.The next year, he returned to academia as a professor at Goddard College, in Plainfield, Vt. He later worked for Vermont’s department of occupational health for two years before moving to Washington.Dr. Froines in 2015 at U.C.L.A., where he directed numerous university research centers and was a pioneering advocate for air quality regulations.UCLA Fielding School of Public HealthDr. Froines’s death leaves just two surviving members of the Chicago Eight, Mr. Seale and Mr. Weiner.The trial of the Chicago Seven became a touchstone of the era, one repeatedly mined for its historical significance. Two movies have been made about the case, most recently “The Trial of the Chicago Seven” (2020), written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, with Danny Flaherty playing Dr. Froines.It was a personal legacy that left Dr. Froines with mixed feelings. He remained as committed to social justice as he had been in his youth, he said, but he had left his activist days behind and was eager to be known better for his work regulating lead than for standing in court beside Abbie Hoffman.“No one is the same now as then,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1990. “We still need student protesters because many of the problems of the ’60s continue and new issues have emerged. But nobody’s a student activist at 50. You’d have to have your head examined.” More

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      Democratic voters say Biden could be doing a lot more for the climate crisis

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      Democratic voters say Biden could be doing a lot more for the climate crisisA Pew survey found more Americans favor stricter environmental laws and regulations – even at an economic cost More than 80% of Democrats think the government is not doing enough to tackle the climate crisis, according to a large nationwide survey that found younger voters across both parties are most frustrated with the pace of political action on green issues.Overall, Americans are largely split along party lines in how they view Joe Biden’s record on pressing climate and environmental challenges like clean water and air quality, according to the Pew Research Center survey of more than 10,000 adults.Just 15% of Republicans think the president’s climate policies are taking the country in the right direction compared with 79% of Democrats.Global dismay as supreme court ruling leaves Biden’s climate policy in tattersRead moreBut worryingly for Biden, whose popularity among his own party has fallen steeply according to recent polls, almost two-thirds of those broadly supportive Democrats think he could be doing a lot more to tackle the climate crisis. As it stands, the US is unlikely to meet its pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as Biden’s climate legislation has been stonewalled by fossil fuel friendly Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and the entire Republican party.The political stagnation is shocking given that 71% of those polled by Pew said their community had suffered an extreme weather event in the past year. This included severe floods or storms (43%), heatwaves (42%), droughts or water shortages (31%), large wildfires (21%), and shoreline erosion due to rising sea levels (16%). Overall, more than eight in ten of those affected by extreme weather believe the climate crisis contributed to the event.The survey was conducted over the first week of May – before the supreme court’s monumental decision limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to set standards and emissions. In another sign that the conservative justices do not reflect the views of most Americans, Pew found that 72% of Americans favor requiring energy companies to use more renewable sources such as wind and solar, while 68% support linking corporate taxes to carbon emissions.The results are an indication of Biden’s struggle to translate rhetoric – he has called climate change “the existential threat to human existence as we know it” – into tangible action. Any hopes of passing significant climate legislation could be essentially snuffed out within weeks if the Republicans come out on top in the November midterms, with dire long-term implications for people suffering worsening heatwaves, droughts, floods and other impacts in the US and overseas.Yet the need for urgent transformative political action could not be clearer. The US was battered by 20 separate billion-dollar climate and weather disasters in 2021, one of the most catastrophic climate years on record, which led to at least 688 deaths, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).After a myriad of dangerous backward steps under Donald Trump, climate action was expected to be a top priority of the Biden administration after the US rejoined the Paris climate agreement and passed a major infrastructure bill with funding for adaptation and renewables.But Biden’s Build Back Better bill, championed as the most aggressive action ever proposed to combat global heating, has been sunk by the opposition of Manchin, who holds a crucial swing vote in an evenly split US Senate.Democrats still hope to scramble about $300bn in clean energy spending in a separate bill before the Senate begins its summer recess in August, after which focus will switch to midterm elections that are expected to go badly for the party. But there is no guarantee Manchin will agree to this, given his objections to support for electric vehicles and a reluctance to do anything that sidelines fossil fuels, an industry in which he is personally invested in via a coal trading company.“If there’s people that don’t want to produce more fossils, then you got a problem,” Manchin said on Monday, citing fears that reduced oil production will further add to inflation.Scientists have said the world must cut emissions in half this decade if disastrous heating is to be avoided, and there is little chance this will happen without swift action from the US. Biden’s administration is now reportedly contemplating allowing various polluting projects, such as a gas pipeline in West Virginia, as well as oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, in return for Manchin’s support to bolster renewable energy.This previously unthinkable trade-off by the White House has dismayed climate activists already critical of Biden’s call for increased oil production to bring down gasoline prices and his failure to meet a campaign promise to halt fossil fuel leases on public land.“Locking in decades of deadly, planet-heating fossil fuels is an outrageous trade that negates the benefits of an ever-weaker climate bill,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Pandering to Manchin has proven disastrous, and continuing to do so will have catastrophic consequences.”Despite Manchin’s fear mongering, according to the Pew survey 53% of Americans believe stricter environmental laws are worth any associated cost to the economy – though this is down from 65% in 2019. On this issue, the partisan divide is actually widening: three-quarters of Republicans say stricter environmental laws would hurt jobs and the economy – up 20 percentage points from 2019. Among Democrats, only 21% have a negative view of stricter environmental laws and regulations, up from 14% in 2019.There is some common ground across the political divide. The vast majority of Americans (90%) say they favor planting a trillion or so trees to absorb carbon emissions to help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, and 79% favor tax credits to encourage businesses to develop technology to capture and store carbon.But despite record high fuel prices Biden, and whoever succeeds him in the Oval Office, has an uphill battle persuading Americans to give up gas-guzzling cars. Pew found that 55% of people oppose phasing out new gasoline cars and trucks by 2035.TopicsClimate crisisBiden administrationJoe BidenDemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      The Russia-Ukraine War Proves That We Must Define National Security Differently

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      in US Politics

      Global dismay as supreme court ruling leaves Biden’s climate policy in tatters

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      Global dismay as supreme court ruling leaves Biden’s climate policy in tattersBiden’s election was billed as heralding a ‘climate presidency’ but congressional and judicial roadblocks mean he has little to show Joe Biden’s election triggered a global surge in optimism that the climate crisis would, finally, be decisively confronted. But the US supreme court’s decision last week to curtail America’s ability to cut planet-heating emissions has proved the latest blow to a faltering effort by Biden on climate that is now in danger of becoming largely moribund.The supreme court’s ruling that the US government could not use its existing powers to phase out coal-fired power generation without “clear congressional authorization” quickly ricocheted around the world among those now accustomed to looking on in dismay at America’s seemingly endless stumbles in addressing global heating.The US supreme court has declared war on the Earth’s future | Kate AronoffRead moreThe decision “flies in the face of established science and will set back the US’s commitment to keep global temperature below 1.5C”, said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, in reference to the internationally agreed goal to limit global heating before it becomes truly catastrophic, manifesting in more severe heatwaves, floods, droughts and societal unrest.“The people who will pay the price for this will be the most vulnerable communities in the most vulnerable developing countries in the world,” Huq added.The “incredibly undemocratic Scotus ruling” indicates that “backsliding is now the dominant trend in the climate space,” said Yamide Dagnet, director of climate justice at Open Society Foundations and former climate negotiator for the UK and European Union. António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations who has called new fossil fuel infrastructure “moral and economic madness”, said via a spokesman that the ruling was a “setback” at a time when countries were badly off track in averting looming climate breakdown.In the 6-3 ruling, backed by the rightwing majority of justices, the supreme court did not completely negate the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to regulate emissions from coal plants. But it did side with Republican-led states in stating that the government could not set broad plans to shift electricity generation away from coal because of the nebulous “major questions doctrine” that demands Congress explicitly decide on significant changes to the US economy.“The court appoints itself, instead of Congress or the expert agency, the decision-maker on climate policy,” wrote justice Elena Kagan in an unusually blunt dissenting opinion. “I cannot think of many things more frightening.”Al Gore, the former US vice-president said the ruling was the “result of decades of influence and coordination by the fossil fuel lobby and its allies to delay, obstruct, and dismantle progress toward climate solutions”.For Biden, who called the ruling “devastating”, the court’s decision is just the latest crushing jolt to what was billed as a “climate presidency” when he was elevated to the White House.Landmark legislation to bolster clean energy has stalled in Congress, largely due to the opposition of Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat who has a coal-trading firm, and is perilously close to not being resurrected in time before midterm elections later this year in which Democrats are expected to lose their tenuous hold on Congress. The US, almost uniquely among major democracies, still has no national climate or energy policy in place.Biden’s promise to end oil and gas drilling on public land has been unfulfilled, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused gasoline prices to leap, prompting the president to urge oil companies to ramp up production, to the horror of climate campaigners.The president has vowed that the US will cut its emissions in half by 2030 but this goal, and America’s waning international credibility on climate change, will be lost without both legislation from Congress and strong executive actions. Both of these factors remain highly uncertain, with the supreme court’s ruling sharply restricting the latter option. Gina McCarthy, the White House’s top climate adviser, has admitted the administration will have to get “creative” in forcing down emissions.“Congress acting on climate was important before this decision, now it’s even more important,” said John Larsen, partner at Rhodium group, a climate and energy analysis organization. According to Rhodium, the supreme court ruling is not fatal to US climate targets but there are still 1.7bn to 2.3bn tons of greenhouse gases that will need to be prevented on top of current policy if the 2030 goal is to be met.“The EPA still has authority, although it is more narrow than it was, so they need to get moving and crank out some rules because there’s not a lot of time left,” Larsen said.“It’s entirely possible the US will meet its emissions target but we have just eight years until 2030. The ball needs to start rolling very fast, very soon, if we are to get there. Everyone needs to really step up and start delivering.”TopicsClimate crisisUS supreme courtUS Environmental Protection AgencyUS politicsJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Environmentalists condemn Biden administration’s offshore drilling plan

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      Environmentalists condemn Biden administration’s offshore drilling planPolicy would ban new ocean drilling but allow up to 11 lease sales in Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s south coast Joe Biden’s administration on Friday unveiled a five-year offshore oil and gas drilling development plan that blocks all new drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans within US territorial waters while allowing some lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s south coast.The plan, which has not been finalized, could allow up to 11 lease sales but gives the interior department the right to make none. It comes two days after the US supreme court curbed the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to respond to the climate crisis.Environmental groups criticized the plan, and some expressed concern that the administration was backing away from the president’s “no more drilling” pledge during a March 2020 one-on-one debate with Bernie Sanders.Biden at the time said, “No more drilling on federal lands, no more drilling, including offshore – no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill – period.”Environmental groups also argued that new leasing would impede the Biden administration’s goal to cut carbon emissions by at least 50% by 2030 in an effort to keep global heating under the threshold of 1.5C (2.7F).“President Biden campaigned on climate leadership, but he seems poised to let us down at the worst possible moment,” said Brady Bradshaw, senior oceans campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The reckless approval of yet more offshore drilling would mean more oil spills, more dead wildlife and more polluted communities. We need a five-year plan with no new leases.”Wenonah Hauter of Food & Water Watch said: “President Biden has called the climate crisis the existential threat of our time, but the administration continues to pursue policies that will only make it worse.”On Friday, the interior secretary, Deb Haaland, said she and the president “had made clear our commitment to transition to a clean energy economy”. The department’s proposal, she said, was “an opportunity for the American people to consider and provide input on the future of offshore oil and gas leasing”.California passes first sweeping US law to reduce single-use plasticRead moreThe proposal to sell off 11 leases must go through a series of reviews and a period of public comment that is likely to be contentious. Most of the new leases would be offered in parts of the western and central Gulf of Mexico, far from where legislators have outlawed new drilling near Florida.The executive director of Healthy Gulf, Cyn Sarthou, said the organization was troubled by the apparent change of policy.“Now is not the time to continue business as usual,” Sarthou said. “The continuing threat posed by climate change requires the nation to focus on a transition to renewable energy.”Nearly 95% of US offshore oil production and 71% of offshore natural gas production occurs in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. About 15% of oil production comes from offshore drilling.The proposed leases come after sales in two regions of the Gulf were abandoned because of legal challenges.Advocates for the oil industry welcomed the new proposal, including the Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.“Our allies across the free world are in desperate need of American oil and gas,” Manchin said in a statement. “I am disappointed to see that ‘zero’ lease sales is even an option on the table.”One of the proposed new leases could be granted in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, an area that is already highly vulnerable to the effects of climate breakdown. “This decision is incredibly disappointing in the face of ongoing climate impacts that are already being deeply felt by our community around Alaska,” said the advocacy director at Cook Inletkeeper, Liz Mering.Mering added: “Alaskans have worked to ensure that Lower Cook Inlet remains this incredible place for our fisheries and tourism industry, which support a thriving local economy. Thirty-three years after the horrific Exxon Valdez disaster, Alaskans still remember and recognize the risk of more oil fouling our waters, killing our fish and hurting Alaskans.”The proposal came a day after the administration held its first auction of onshore lease sales, drawing bids of $22m from energy companies seeking drilling rights on about 110 square miles of public land across Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming.After the sale, the Western Environmental Law Center attorney Melissa Hornbein said: “Overwhelming scientific evidence shows us that burning fossil fuels from existing leases on federal lands is incompatible with a livable climate.”TopicsBiden administrationJoe BidenOilGasUS politicsCommoditiesClimate crisisnewsReuse this content More

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      Why Joe Biden’s Green Energy Policy is Dead

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Biden’s risky gamble: betting on lowering oil prices | Editorial

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      The Guardian view on Biden’s risky gamble: betting on lowering oil pricesEditorialThe climate agenda risks being derailed by energy market disruptions caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia this month highlights the paradox of American power. The US has the economic heft to punish an opponent – but not enough to alter the behaviour of a determined adversary. Sanctions will see Russia’s economy contract by 9% next year. But Washington needs more nations to join its camp to halt Moscow’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Mr Biden has been forced to prioritise war objectives over ethics in meeting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA says ordered the barbaric murder of the prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi.The havoc that Russia’s war has caused on the world’s energy markets is contributing to an economic crisis that is playing into the hands of Mr Biden’s domestic opponents. This highlights the west’s failure to confront the climate emergency with a less carbon-intensive economic model. The green agenda risks being derailed by sky-high hydrocarbon prices. This scenario could have been averted if western nations had accelerated their net zero agendas by driving down energy demand – the lack of UK home insulation is one glaring failure – and spending on renewables to achieve energy security. Instead, this week the G7 watered down pledges to halt fossil fuel investment over fears of winter energy shortages as Moscow squeezes supplies.Boycotts and bans against Russia, even as they take a toll on the global economy, will cause ordinary Russians hardship. But this has not moved Vladimir Putin. Soaring crude prices fuel Moscow’s war machine. A price cap on Russia’s petroleum exports might choke off the cash. But a concern is that China and India will buy Mr Putin’s oil at a price that still lets the Kremlin profit. Clever technical solutions mask hard choices. Sanctions drive up energy prices for consumers unless there are alternative supplies available. Right now, to bring down oil prices means producing more planet-destroying energy. That requires US engagement with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which bear responsibility for the disastrous Yemen war. Washington might have to woo Venezuela and Iran, nations which will play Moscow off against the west.The US is pursuing a three-pronged strategy: increasing pressure on Russia; getting more oil into markets to bring prices down; and allowing central banks to raise interest rates to levels that look as if they might cause a recession. The latter is designed to signal to oil producers that energy prices will collapse. The painful recessions of the 1970s and early 1980s played a part in bringing down oil prices after energy shocks – and contributed to the Soviet Union’s disintegration. But this took 15 years. Mr Putin’s Russia may not be as powerful as its forerunner. It might be more brittle than the Soviet Union. But there are few signs of imminent collapse.As the west seeks to reduce its reliance on Russian hydrocarbons, there seems to be a global “gold rush” for new fossil fuel projects defended as temporary supply measures. The risk, with the US as the largest hydrocarbon producer, is that the world becomes locked into an irreversible climate catastrophe. Europe might become as reliant on US gas as it once was on Russian gas. Donald Trump proved America could be an unreliable ally. Rightwing supreme court justices have hobbled Mr Biden’s power to limit harmful emissions. Meanwhile, China has emerged as a world leader in renewable energy as well as the metals on which it depends. Mr Biden had wanted to transition the US away from oil. Yet during his time in office the sector’s market value has doubled because prices have risen. Jarringly, as the climate emergency grows ever more urgent, fossil fuel appears the pivot on which the war in Ukraine will turn.TopicsUkraineOpinionClimate crisisJoe BidenUS politicsSaudi ArabiaMohammed bin SalmanOileditorialsReuse this content More

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      The US supreme court has declared war on the Earth’s future | Kate Aronoff

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      The US supreme court has declared war on the Earth’s futureKate AronoffIn a major environmental case, the court has made clear that it would rather represent the interests of corporations and the super-rich than the needs and desires of the vast majority of Americans – or people on Earth In remarks to the first Earth Day gathering in 1970, the Maine senator Edmund Muskie made the case for the Clean Air Act – a bill he helped draft – in stark terms. “There is no space command center, ready to give us precise instruction and alternate solutions for survival on our spaceship Earth,” he told the crowd. “Our nation – and our world – hang together by tenuous bonds which are strained as they have never been strained before – and as they must never be strained again. We cannot survive an undeclared war on our future.”In its Thursday ruling on West Virginia v EPA – in line with a string of decisions that will make life here more dangerous – the US supreme court all but declared that war, curtailing the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate power plants under a provision of the Clean Air Act and – more worryingly – striking an opening blow to the government’s ability to do its job.It hasn’t done so alone. The foundations for today’s ruling, like the other disastrous ones delivered this term, were laid well before Muskie gave his speech in Philadelphia. Along with the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act – passed during the Nixon administration – was a last gasp of the New Deal order, putting the government to work on an audacious and unprecedented task. Muskie hoped, as he said that day, that it might bring about “a society that will not tolerate slums for some and decent houses for others, rats for some and playgrounds for others, clean air for some and filth for others” through “planning more effective and just laws and more money better spent”.That approach to governance is precisely what a coterie of rightwing philanthropists and legal activists found so threatening, and why they became a core part of the right’s decades-long crusade against the kinder, bigger state.The crowning achievement of that crusade was the election of Ronald Reagan, who proved to be a useful cipher for fossil fuel-funded thinktanks and neoliberal economists to get their message out. It was none other than Justice Neil Gorsuch’s mother who helped Reagan try to strip the federal government’s environmental protection apparatus for parts. As Reagan’s pick to lead the EPA, Anne M Gorsuch made it her personal mission to shrink the body tasked with enacting the Clean Air Act. She railed against what she described as a “set of commands from Congress”. Looking back on her term, Gorsuch – who slashed the agency’s budget by a quarter – took pride in having helmed the “only agency in Washington that was truly practicing New Federalism”, devolving as many of its responsibilities as possible down to the states. Following in her footsteps, Judge Gorsuch has railed against the Chevron Doctrine that’s been a main target of the conservative legal movement (not overturned today, thankfully), saying it allowed “executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power”.But the roots of this ruling run deeper than Neil Gorsuch wanting to make mom proud. Polluters have always been happy to throw small fortunes at the right’s quest for minority rule, keen to protect fossil fuel profits and their ability to dump waste into the air and water from pesky things like democracy. As Nancy MacLean writes in Democracy in Chains, Charles Koch took a special interest in destroying public education, thus maintaining de facto segregation, before leading the charge against climate policy at every level of government. He continues to be a generous funder of the Federalist Society, an instrumental force in building and filling the pipeline of clerks, judges and cases that has created the judicial branch as we know it, and rulings like the one that overturned Roe v Wade last week. Secretive dark-money outfits like Donors Trust, as well as Chevron and the Scaife Foundation – furnished by old oil and aluminum money – have joined him.West Virginia v EPA itself was brought with the help of the Republican Attorneys General Association, a network of state attorneys general whose own funders include the country’s biggest fossil fuel companies and the beleaguered coal barons who had the most to lose from the modest power plant regulations. They also spent $150,000 sponsoring Trump’s rally on 6 January.The interests of the country’s wealthiest residents and corporations are at odds with the vast majority of people who live here. Luckily for the right, a political system designed by slaveholders provides an easy on ramp to concretize minority rule, encasing their power within definitionally undemocratic institutions. With a young, ideological rightwing majority on the court, there’s no telling how far they might go. And there’s not much that can stop them.Gorsuch, ironically, put it well in his concurring opinion. But the line applies better to him and his colleagues than to the federal bureaucrats he was railing against: “a republic – a thing of the people – would be more likely to enact just laws than a regime administered by a ruling class of largely unaccountable ‘ministers’.”
      Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at the New Republic and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back
      TopicsEnvironmentOpinionUS politicsUS supreme courtUS Environmental Protection AgencyLaw (US)commentReuse this content More