Media outlets are pushing the conservative narrative that the Obama administration will “bypass Congress” with a new plan to reduce carbon emissions while ignoring key context: the 2007 Supreme Court decision that explicitly gave the executive branch the power to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act and the endangerment finding that made the EPA “statutorily obligated” to do so.

President Obama announced the details of his new plan to deal with the challenge of climate change in a June 25 speech at Georgetown University. Details of the White House plan, which will extend regulation on carbon emissions to existing power plants, were released on the morning of June 25.

Advance coverage of Obama's climate speech and plan by Fox News, Politico, The Associated Press, NBC News, and The Hill echoes past criticism from conservative media of Obama's efforts to combat climate change by focusing on the fact that the efforts do not need to be approved by Congress.

On the June 25 edition of Fox & Friends First, business analyst Diane Macedo concluded her report on the climate policies that Obama is likely to announce by noting that “none of these steps require congressional approval,” and that Obama is “seek[ing] ways to work around [Congress].”

Politico reported on June 21 that the president was “preparing to bypass Congress on climate change.” An NBCNews.com headline described the president's intent to “sidestep Congress with new initiatives to reduce carbon emissions.” And The Hill stated that the administration would “curb emissions using executive powers that sidestep Congress” and the plan was “designed to get around Congress.”

However, not one of these outlets explained that the Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government already has the authority to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. Right-wing media outlets similarly excluded this critical context when they hyperbolically accused the administration of breaking the law by proposing carbon regulations that did not require congressional approval. In June 2012, Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer said that earlier EPA regulations on carbon emissions were “outright lawlessness.” A March Wall Street Journal editorial also claimed that Obama's efforts to regulate carbon make him similar to a dictator.

A 2007 Supreme Court ruling affirmed the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act, and ordered direct action if greenhouse emissions were found to be harmful to human health. In 2009, the EPA found that greenhouse gases are harmful due to their contribution to climate change, making the EPA “statutorily obligated ... to regulate CO2 emissions from existing power plants, according to a January report from Duke University's Nicholas Institute. This endangerment finding was upheld in 2012 by the DC Circuit Court. As Legal Planet, the environmental law and policy blog of the University of California Berkeley and UCLA law schools noted in December 2011, executive regulation of carbon emissions through the EPA is far from undemocratic:

[T]here's nothing here that's an end-run around Congress.  EPA is (as bureaucracies should do) implementing the orders of the legislature through duly enacted laws.

By omitting the EPA's legal obligation to regulate carbon emissions, The Hill, Politico, NBC News, and Fox help to perpetuate inaccurate right-wing attacks on climate change policies.