Secret memos obtained by The New York Times illuminate the origins of the court’s now-routine “shadow docket” rulings on presidential power.
The whole shift to rulings with big impact and no reasoning was because the Republicans desperately wanted to stop climate regulations:
By a 5-to-4 vote along partisan lines, the order halted President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, his signature environmental policy. They acted before any other court had addressed the plan’s lawfulness. The decision consisted of only legal boilerplate, without a word of reasoning.
The whole thing is absolutely insane:
Even as they debated the Obama plan’s possible burden on the power industry, in the entire chain of correspondence obtained by The Times, not a single justice, conservative or liberal, mentioned the dangers of a warming planet as one of the possible harms the court should consider.
Even though those harms cost far more than Obama’s Clean Power Plan did — it would have on net saved money.
Consider the ages of those involved, they will be long dead of natural causes by the time the true “find out” stages of climate change has really gotten going. Also they’ve got wealth & privilege so will have the easiest time migrating to safer places.
Even now, Phoenix Arizona is still another 3 years, at least, away from when evacuations will need to start while Vegas has maybe another 8 as long as the deeper water lines work as designed. Miami could defy the somewhat impossible odds and survive another decade before a hurricane wipes it out like Andrew did to Homestead. Yes bad things are starting to happen faster now, but we could have had another decade of some semblance of normalcy.