Over and over the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has buried a knife in the back of the Biden Administration’s attempt to deliver cleaner air, cleaner water and a fighting chance to mitigate the climate crisis. By doing so, they also buried a knife in the back of the health and life expectancy of everyone in Utah, almost literally. Yet Utah’s Republican leaders cheered the court’s callousness.
Two years ago, the court neutered EPA’s Clean Power Plan, aimed at reducing coal power plant emissions nationwide and accelerating their disappearance as major climate villains. Last year, they narrowed the definition of wetlands in a way that dismisses the many environmental benefits that wetlands provide, and wetlands throughout the country will be lost because of it.
We cannot save Great Salt Lake while degrading and amputating its wetlands. But that’s what’s in store for more than tens of thousands of acres of the lake’s adjacent wetlands thanks to the misguided warehouse building frenzy brought to you by the Utah Inland Port Authority.
Trading wetlands for asphalt is an air pollution “double whammy.” Wetlands act like sponges and absorb particulate pollution. The presence or absence of wetlands can even predict levels of particulate pollution in an area. On the other hand, asphalt, even without vehicle traffic, emits VOCs and secondary organic aerosols virtually indefinitely, especially in summer heat. In fact, this phenomenon was calculated as equal to, or even exceeding the contribution of tailpipe emissions to summertime PM2.5 in Los Angeles. VOCs are toxic in and of themselves and are also precursors of ozone.
Wetlands can store 20 to 40 times more carbon than agricultural land, and for hundreds of years. But once warmed or disturbed, they release three potent greenhouse gasses — CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. Wetlands’ capturing of sediment helps sequester heavy metals, preventing them from reaching Great Salt Lake and becoming airborne if the lake dries up. Heavy metals are some of the greatest hazards contaminating the lake’s dust.
In the past two weeks, the court continued swinging their wrecking ball at all aspects of American life, particularly at the environment. Air pollution is responsible for about one in five deaths worldwide and contributes to four of the five leading causes of death. Nonetheless, the court buried their knife in the Good Neighbor Rule, which would have forced Utah to be a good neighbor to Colorado by requiring tighter pollution controls on our large coal fired power plants whose emissions actually do “bury” people in Colorado.
Utah’s political leaders celebrated the court allowing them to continue being a bad neighbor and bury even more people in Colorado, as if their lives and health mean nothing. But Utah’s coal power plants are major regional sources of pollution. They drape our own national parks with smog, and as the state’s largest sources of nitrogen oxides, (precursors of ozone and particulate pollution), damage and shorten the lives of Utahns, as if our lives and health also mean nothing.
Anti-regulatory zealots have dreamt about reversing the “Chevron doctrine” like it was the second coming, and the Supreme Court, assuming the mantle of deity, answered their prayers. Gaps or ambiguity in congressional law (and there is inevitably both) will no longer be filled by the judgment of civil service experts. Details of the laws that govern federal agencies will now be filled in by judges via their ruling on lawsuits. And given their recent judicial power grab and eagerness to have the final say on just about everything, six hard right judges have made themselves the final arbiters on environmental issues.
Big polluters like the Koch Brothers, who funded the Chevron challenge in the first place, are licking their chops to start filing lawsuits to gut federal environmental rules. The knowledge of actual medical and scientific experts will now take a back seat to the opinions of Federalist-Society-approved law school graduates on how clean your air and water will be.
Through dark money from the pockets of hard right billionaires, Leonard Leo has acted as their middle man in essentially purchasing our Supreme Court and lower courts. And on their behalf, the investment has paid off handsomely. Federal agencies that depend on scientific expertise to establish regulations will now be at the mercy of ideologues who hate regulations.
Expertise matters, and the farcicality of the ruling was exposed before the ink was dry. In writing the conservative majority’s opinion, in five places Justice Neil Gorsuch showed he didn’t know the difference between nitrogen oxides (a hazardous smoke stack pollutant) and nitrous oxide (best known as an anesthetic gas). An anesthesiologist who doesn’t know the difference could kill someone. A Supreme Court that doesn’t know the difference could kill en masse.
When anti-regulatory purity is prioritized over expertise, your life could be the consequence.
Dr. Brian Moench is president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. He recently retired from a 40 year career practicing intraoperative anesthesia.
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