https://www.ddponline.org/2021/12/23/ddp-files-an-amicus-brief-against-epa-overreach/
DDP Files an Amicus Brief against EPA Overreach
On Dec 20, 2021 Doctors for Disaster Preparedness filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the biggest energy case in a decade, West Virginia v. EPA, No. 20-1530. DDP urges the Court to end the interference with affordable energy by the Environmental Protection Agency, which was never authorized by Congress.
The question presented in the brief is whether an administrative agency can unilaterally issue rules so far-reaching as to reshape the nation’s electricity grids and “decarbonize” any sector of the economy, with virtually no limit.
“Misuse of science for an agenda of political control is dangerous, and the sort of tyranny by factionalism that the Constitution safeguards against,” DDP argues. The faction of climate change activists seeks broad control of our entire energy sector without authorization by Congress.
“If current trends continue, a handful of unelected bureaucrats could virtually prohibit use of the combustion engine…, and average Americans will become dependent on government allowance of electric charging stations in order to merely travel from point A to B.” Americans would also be dependent on government for access to heating, refrigeration, and lighting, the brief notes.
“Today there is no greater factional ‘zeal’, as James Madison put it, than the demand for increased government control over energy under a theory of a cataclysmic man-made climate change,” DDP argues, urging the Court to “embrace the Constitution and affirm that Congress exists to deal with such factions.”
Under EPA’s expansive interpretation of the Clean Air Act, it could control the lives of more than 300 million Americans under the guise of improving air quality. It is unlikely that even Congress has such power, DDP notes, and “it would be unconstitutional for Congress to delegate such sweeping power to an unaccountable administrator.”
“Continued unfettered delegation to administrative agencies leaves a cavernous hole in the constitutionally balanced structure of checks and balances because agencies are prone to be arbitrary and unaccountable,” DDP writes.
Allowing the administrative state to overstep these boundaries is perilous to liberty, states DDP.
Doctors for Disaster Preparedness is a group of independent scientists founded in 1984.
