One firmly expects that this one judge’s decision won’t survive appeal to higher courts , but that is a precedent for an eventual  and perhaps not so distant one that will stick and thus be momentous. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Stacy Shelton writes, with a giddy tint, “environmentalists nationwide are celebrating Monday’s Fulton Country Superior Court decision…” that may make new conventional coal plants impossible. The judge told would-be operators of one such proposed power station to just hold on – and instructed the state’s environmental protection agency to demand limits on the plant’s CO2 emissions. That’s a first – a court order demanding CO2 be treated under pollution laws just like other, but clinically toxic, emissions.

A Sierra Club man told reporters, “This is the beginning of the end of conventional coal-fired power plants….”. The activist org. is among the case’s prime plaintiffs.
If only it were so easy. Big coal has BIG money, as do the utilities that burn its product, and as does industry and, most important, as does the general public. None are at all resigned to blackouts and rolling brownouts and soaring electricity bills while coal capture and sequestration technologies remain good ideas with absolutely no full-scale prototype operations, anywhere.

This is getting attention for some hefty outlets. Reporters appear to sense something big is up – perhaps like detecting the groaning of a glacier about to slide into the sea. Stories include:

NY Times Matthew L. Wald writes that the decision may herald legal difficulties for new coal plants in many other states as well ; Wall Street Journal does it succinctly, highlighting that this is the first local impact of “a landmark US Supreme Court decision on global warming” – which would be the one telling the EPA that unnatural addition of CO2 qualifies as air pollution ; Reuters ; Bloomberg Edward Klump, Greg Stohr ; AP Greg Bluestein provides not only useful detail but a fine quote from another ecstatic Sierra Clubber, “This is a new day in the United States” ;

Grist for the Mill: Sierra Club Press Release ;

Pic source ;

-CP

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