Court Ruling on Drilling

 The decision, by a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana, (2/21, A11) which holds that using the “social cost of carbon “in weighing the impact of drilling for gas and oil on federal property is unconstitutional because that metric had not been authorized by Congress, is a judicial disgrace.

Agencies of the federal government are authorized to make rules. Courts have long recognized that authority and have generally deferred to the expertise of those agencies when reviewing their decisions.
The judge in this case put politics before precedent and bought into the notion that the economic benefits to states, of drilling for gas and oil on federal land, somehow outweighs the damage done by carbon use to the survivability of the planet. The court invented a nonexistent constitutional right to justify its indefensible ruling. If the Supreme Court upholds this judicial activism, it will forfeit any remaining public confidence it may still retain