I don’t think an originalist would take this view. To use hyperbole, I don’t think anyone intended the bill to empower the epa to shut down the energy industry.
This is sort of out of scope of originalism: it concerns an Act of Congress that delivers power to the Executive, not the contents of the minds of the Framers of the Constitution. The Framers perhaps didn’t expect a large Federal Government to begin with, but the cat is out of the bag on that one (and is not consistent with SCOTUS’s actual ruling here).
The bill is clearly not intended to “shut down” anything. It empowers the EPA to protect the quality of the air that we all breathe, and that’s how it was applied. If coal power plants need to externalize their pollution to be financially viable, that says more about our failures to preempt the situation than some kind of bloodthirsty plot on the EPA’s part.
Look I’m all for addressing climate change head on. But I guess at the end of the day I just see this as regulatory overreach. Can one squint and see the rationale, definitely. But my simplistic mind sees the original intent of the bill as a way to protect against substances that are physically poisonous/harmful (radon, arsenic, etc). It was not intended to regulate safe emissions (co2) (that creates harm by increasing severe weather events/changing climate). If were to make a hyperbolic argument, it seems you could stop cement making, cattle ranching, and limit population control based on the EPAs interpretation of CO2 as a pollutant.
The bill is clearly not intended to “shut down” anything. It empowers the EPA to protect the quality of the air that we all breathe, and that’s how it was applied. If coal power plants need to externalize their pollution to be financially viable, that says more about our failures to preempt the situation than some kind of bloodthirsty plot on the EPA’s part.