Michael Barbaro

But it's not the end of the story.

Meaning?

Environmental groups, states are going to immediately sue.

And this will be played out in the courts over the next several years.

And what do we expect will happen in the courts and just how high up in the courts is this likely to go?

Well, that's the thing.

We know what the group that we've been talking about, the folks who laid out this roadmap, hope to see.

And that is that this case gets before the Supreme Court.

And if that happens, there is a lot of hope in the conservative movement that the landmark decision

Climate change case, Massachusetts versus EPA, could be overturned or significantly weakened.

So their hope is that the endangerment finding ends up before the Supreme Court in such a way that a conservative majority of the Supreme Court would overturn the original Supreme Court ruling that allows the endangerment finding to have ever come into existence.

You hit the nail on the head.

And if that happens, a future president would not be able to reinstate regulations addressing greenhouse gas emissions unless and until Congress explicitly said, go do that.

And let's presume for just a moment, Lisa, that our legal system does allow the endangerment finding to go away.

I want to talk about the repercussions of that on the environment, on industry.

And let's just start with the impact on industry that now operates under these regulations that I presume suddenly would start to go away.

Well, one thing that industry would get is the certainty that it has said it always wants, right?

It would know that it would not face what has been a decade and a half of whiplash.

Democrats come in and start to regulate power plants and automobiles and the rest, and then a Republican administration comes in and removes or weakens them.

There would be a new playing field, and it would not include regulatory restrictions.