The Supreme Court has been busy over the past few weeks. In addition to relegating child-bearing individuals to second-class citizens who should not be allowed to make decisions regarding their own bodies or health care, they’re also signaled that tearing down the laws protecting gay couples, contraception, and general rights to privacy could be next on their agenda. While those are only hypotheticals at the moment, one decision that is very real—and totally nonsensical—is the court’s recent ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency no longer has the right to protect the environment.
Say what?
As Trevor Noah explained on Thursday night:
In the last few weeks, [the Supreme Court] decided that church and states should get a little cozier. They decided that America’s real gun problem is that there aren’t enough of them. And they decided that coochies are state property.
And this week, just as their term ended, they decided that the Environmental Protection Agency has a little too much say over what we need to do to protect the environment so that our children and their children don’t spontaneously combust when the average winter temperature hits 132°. So they, as CNN put it, curbed the department’s “ability to regulate planet-warming emissions from the country’s power plants, just as scientists warn the world is running out of time to get the climate crisis under control.”
Great timing, guys!
Noah, like the rest of us, was understandably confused:
Wait, wait, what? The Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to protect the environment? So… what is their job now? Are they just going to look at the environment and be like: ‘Oh SH*T! Alright, that was a good day at work. You guys wanna get some drinks?
Noah also commented on the way in which American media outlets often phrase news stories like this one, which was described by some as “a defeat for the Biden administration.” But given the gravity of what we’re talking about here, Noah sees it a bit differently: “It is a defeat for human life! It has nothing to do with Biden. You realize if we don’t get it under control, climate change is going to wipe us off the planet? And still these news anchors are going to be underwater like, ‘Will the rising sea levels help the Democrats or will it hurt the Republicans?’
You can watch the full clip above.