Pelicans and other seabirds at Queen Bess Island. (Staff Photo by David Grunfeld)

After further review (a historically complete and exhaustive review), the call from the American people has been confirmed: Donald Trump has been fired and Joe Biden has been hired as president.

But there was another call at the polls that also must be noted: The GOP likely will retain control of the Senate with a two-seat majority.

So what does that mean for quickly reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are steadily pushing Louisiana’s coast from its tenuous hold on life support and into the endgame of hospice care?

It means our future here will be impacted by two key questions.

• Can the Biden administration undo Trump’s extensive environmental damage (he rolled back or killed 100 regulations) by crafting environmental rules that pass review of a pro-business U.S. Supreme Court?
• And will Louisiana’s two senators, John Kennedy and Bill Cassidy, decide they want to be remembered as heroes of the state’s sustainable future rather than its willfully blind pallbearer?

That first question comes courtesy of Rob Verchick, the Loyola University environmental law professor who worked with the Obama administration crafting its landmark Clean Power Plan, which eventually passed court muster, but which Trump repealed. That experience informs Verchick not only on what Trump actions need to be undone immediately, but also how Biden must achieve that.

He said the Biden administration should first concentrate on reversing some of Trump’s more egregious actions by rebuilding the Clean Power Plan, reinstating more stringent fuel economy standards for cars, more aggressive methane emission controls, and redirecting federal agencies to encourage permits on public lands for renewable energy projects rather than mining.

But he said the 6-3 court Trump left behind will mean abandoning one of Obama’s policymaking strategies: trying to accommodate states’ economic and political concerns.

“You heard a lot of conservatives saying (the Clean Power Plan) was forced on the states without their input, but just the opposite was the case,” Verchick said. “He actually crafted the plan by reaching out to states to make adjustments to ease their individual economic concerns while still achieving the overall goal of reducing emissions.”

And then what happened? Well, a number of red states joined suits seeking to undo the plan because those individual modifications — which they requested — meant they were not all being treated equally.

Encouraged by the welcoming arms of our very pro-business court, industries seeking to limit the cost of environmental regulations have flooded the federal bench asking laws and regulations be canceled. They don’t object to the goals: cleaner air and water or slowing climate change. They just pick at the wording, calling it ambiguous or arbitrary or asserting that it implies the agencies have authority which they do not deserve.

And this gives a court whose majority has pledged loyalty to “textualism” (meaning the letter of the law trumps its goals), another excuse to protect its corporate citizens and cripple the “administrative state” (the list of agencies that referee the free market and capitalism) which is another one of this court’s boogeymen.

If it wins, the Biden administration will have to reword the regulation, a time-consuming process allowing emissions to rise and Louisiana’s deadline for coastal survival to shrink.

And if Congress has to reword the regulations, it means nothing will be done, because the GOP Senate will block it.

Read the rest of the article at The Times-Picayune.