Supreme Court Verdicts That Will Shape India’s Climate Policy

Quick Summary

• In its latest term,the U.S. Supreme Court released decisions on environmental topics but avoided landmark rulings.
• Key decisions indirectly affecting climate and environmental policy involved legitimizing executive branch actions to fire personnel and block Congress-approved funding.

– Trump v. Wilcox and Office of Personnel Management v. American Federation of Government Employees enabled firings without cause at several federal agencies, weakening their workforce on climate-related projects.
– Trump v. CASA limited district court powers to issue nationwide injunctions against presidential orders, potentially influencing executive actions on environmental policy rollbacks during litigation periods.

• The court chose not to block EPA policies enforcing greenhouse gas emission reductions in Ohio v. EPA. However, it allowed oil companies to sue over California’s stricter auto emission rules in Diamond Option Energy LLC v. EPA.
• Other rulings:

– Environmental reviews can exclude indirect impacts like upstream oil refining (Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County).
– Narrow ruling on unenforceability of some pollution permits under Clean Water Act (City and County of San Francisco v. EPA).

Potential future challenges include overturning precedents enabling individuals to sue polluters based on aesthetic harm (Friends of the Earth) or invalidating the endangerment finding that allows regulation of greenhouse gases.Indian Opinion Analysis
The recent U.S Supreme Court’s term highlights structural shifts that may indirectly affect global environmental commitments related to the Paris Agreement and beyond by altering agency effectiveness in implementing domestic policies tied to international goals like carbon reduction targets.

India closely tracks developments like these as any weakening or rollback of key regulations by major economies like the United States can influence collective global actions addressing climate change-key for vulnerable nations such as India that face high exposure risks from extreme weather events linked with warming trends.

Moreover, narrower definitions around permissible lawsuits against polluters (such as those potentially challenging aesthetic harms) could set legal precedents globally regarding citizens’ ability for grassroots-level advocacy-a particularly critical tool within democracies aiming rapid transitions into greener economy models as observed domestically through initiatives e.g National Green Tribunal(NGT)

Although these cases arise outside India’s jurisdiction implications ripple interconnected global-science diplomacy read full here Read More at grist.org