b) Prevent climate backsliding
Cinnamon Piñon Carlarne 21, 19th President and Dean of Albany Law School, was the Associate Dean for Faculty & Intellectual Life at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, leading international expert in environmental and climate change law policy with a deep commitment to environmental equity and social justice, “The Essential Role of Climate Litigation and the Courts in Averting Climate Crisis”, Ohio State Legal Studies Research Paper No. 592, SSRN, 2021
Moreover, pursuant to the same endangerment finding, the EPA also determined that it was obligated to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources, including power plants. As a result, in 2015, the EPA released the Clean Power Plan, which was designed to cut carbon emissions from power plants by 32 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Together, the Clean Power Plan and the automobile fuel standards provided the cornerstones for national efforts to begin ratcheting down emissions to achieve domestic and international emission-reduction targets. In short, the Court’s decision in Massachusetts v EPA prompted the development of the foundation of US climate law. Of course, as this was written, the Trump Administration was attempting to demolish that foundation. The power and the accumulated effect of the Court’s decision in Massachusetts, however, limit the speed and the extent to which the Trump Administration is able to dictate an executive rewriting of national climate law. Hence, in the United States, litigation prompted the construction of the core of federal climate law and provides a backstop to aggressive efforts to erase existing law while also deepening legal and extra-legal momentum on climate change across the waxes and wanes in political leadership.17