By Omar Guzman |Staff Writer|

In an attempt to reduce carbon emissions, California along with five other states, filed a lawsuit against coal-fired power plants.
The Supreme Court is likely to dismiss this case because the environmental issue here may be too big to be handled by just one Supreme Court Justice and may be referred to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“In the 222 years that this court has been sitting, it has never heard a case with so many potential perpetrators and so many potential victims,” said U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal, according to The Los Angeles Times.

In the aforementioned article, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that asking to set carbon emission restrictions and limitations to power plants “just sounds to me like what the EPA does.”

Like Ginsburg, many think it may be unwise to have one Judge regulating all the restrictions, when there is an entire organization dedicated to enforcing solutions to these types of environmental issues.

According to The New York Times, “No one questioned the basic premise of the suit — that greenhouse gas emissions contribute to global warming. But there was essentially no support for the states’ position that courts are the proper forums in which to regulate the problem.”

There is also speculation that this lawsuit might be an elaborate stunt to get more attention from the legislature on the issue, although it has had a large awareness amongst the general public.

According to The Washington Post: “Eight states initially banded together to sue: California, Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin. New Jersey and Wisconsin have since withdrawn. States may regulate utilities within their borders, but need to go to federal court about pollution that crosses state lines.”

More restrictions to power plants in the San Bernardino area are likely to have environmentally favorable results, but can come at a larger cost to the local population.

According to Airnow.gov, air conditions in San Bernardino seem to be “good,” but in the neighboring Riverside area, the air conditions is said to be “moderate,” where the air quality is acceptable, but may pose moderate health risk for groups that are especially sensitive to specific types of air quality.

Whether we should cut down on our current energy consumption is an entirely different issue on itself.

There seems to be a continuing rise for energy consumption at the same time where many restrictions are being made to the same power plants that we get out energy from.

To be more environmentally friendly and cost-efficient, CSUSB is taking many steps to reduce carbon emissions, such as the addition of the solar panel field at the North West corner of the campus and wind energy generators.

“What we are trying to do is to get people to change their behavior, so that they could reduce their energy consumption, which directly reduces carbon emissions,” said Emily Edris, team manager of the CSUSB Green Campus Program,        .

“Our top four goals are to have more energy savings, use natural gas, reduce electricity consumption, and conserve water,” concluded Edris.