The US supreme court has declared war on the Earth’s future | Kate Aronoff

In a major environmental case, the court has made clear that it would rather represent the interests of corporations and the super-rich than the needs and desires of the vast majority of Americans - or people on Earth

In remarks to the first Earth Day gathering in 1970, the Maine senator Edmund Muskie made the case for the Clean Air Act - a bill he helped draft - in stark terms. There is no space command center, ready to give us precise instruction and alternate solutions for survival on our spaceship Earth," he told the crowd. Our nation - and our world - hang together by tenuous bonds which are strained as they have never been strained before - and as they must never be strained again. We cannot survive an undeclared war on our future."

In its Thursday ruling on West Virginia v EPA - in line with a string of decisions that will make life here more dangerous - the US supreme court all but declared that war, curtailing the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate power plants under a provision of the Clean Air Act and - more worryingly - striking an opening blow to the government's ability to do its job.

Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at the New Republic and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet - And How We Fight Back