The Supreme Court refuses, for now, to block new EPA rules to combat climate change: NPR

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to block the Biden administration's new anti-pollution rules, rules that would impose stricter standards on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants and regulate methane emissions from crude oil and natural gas plants.

Mercury is a powerful neurotoxin and methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. Limiting them is part of the EPA's efforts to combat climate change.

Industry groups and about two dozen Republican-led states filed objections to the rules and quickly turned to the Supreme Court to ask that the rules be blocked while litigation continues in lower courts. But the judges rejected the emergency requests, marking a departure from the way they had handled most such cases in the recent past. They urged challengers to pursue their claims in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia before asking them for help. There were no identified disagreements.

The Court's refusal to intervene in the two cases does not mean that the EPA will necessarily prevail. But “it's good that they've learned to say no,” said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

According to the EPA, methane is a “super pollutant” that has 80 times more warming power than carbon dioxide in the first two decades it is in the atmosphere; it is responsible for 30% of the increase in global temperature.

The court has taken no action in a third batch of cases pending in its so-called “emergency protocol.” It's all about new EPA regulations to reduce carbon dioxide from older coal-fired power plants.