President Obama insisted Thursday that his administration is on solid ground with its new power plant rules, despite the Supreme Court’s decision to put the regulations on hold.
The high court’s decision is a major setback for Obama’s climate change agenda, but in his first public remarks about the ruling a a fundraiser in Northern California, the president tried to give a bit of a pep talk to environmentalists and others still smarting from the ruling.
“We are very confident we are on strong legal footing here,” Obama told supporters at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Atherton, Calif. “… One of the reasons I want to talk about this is because in the last couple of days I’ve heard people say, ‘The Supreme Court struck down the clean power plant rule.”
“That’s not true, so don’t despair people,” he added. “This is a legal decision that says, ‘Hold on until we review the legality.'”
The president went on to say that his efforts to combat climate change by regulating emissions from coal-fired power plants is part of an “enormous generational challenge.”
“There are going to be people constantly pushing back and making sure we keep clinging to old dirty fuels and a carbon-emitting economic strategy that we need to be moving away from,” he said.
The Supreme Court issued the stay, but likely will revisit it after an appeals court considers an expedited challenge from 29 states and dozens of corporations and industry groups.
While hardly a hard signal of its final ruling, court watchers are viewing the willingness to intervene and issued the stay while the case proceeds as a hint that it could face a skeptical final assessment.
