Power failure

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore is the recipient of more than 200 awards in her long legal career.

We'd like to add to that list, with this distinction: Georgia's Worst Decision by a Judge in 2008. And the year's not even over yet.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more blatant or destructive example of unrepentant judicial activism. In one fell swoop, Moore managed to concoct bogus "law" out of thin air; she robbed one of the poorest areas of Georgia of an economic boon that would reap millions of dollars; and she threw a king-sized wrench into the state bureaucracy that could reduce commercial and civic development statewide to glacial speed.

To tell the whole story, we'll start with Early County.

In the southwestern corner of the state, Early has no shortage of leaders who want to improve the county's economic climate. So when a company approached them a few years ago with a plan to build a 1,200-megawatt power plant, local officials embraced the idea -- but only after a citizens' task force thoroughly vetted the proposal and agreed.

It looked very attractive, too. The coal-fired plant, which would be one of the cleanest-burning in the United States, would bring 100 high-paying jobs, and the five-year construction of it would attract about 1,200 more jobs. In a county with a 28-percent poverty rate, the positive impact of this $2 billion project -- and the millions in tax revenue it would bring -- is blindingly obvious.

The Georgia Environmental Protection Division also took a thorough look at the project, and issued a Clean Air Act permit that would bind the plant to some of the strictest federal and state standards in the nation.

But that still outraged environmentalists at the Sierra Club, wringing their hands over the plant's potential carbon dioxide emissions. So they started fighting tooth and nail to get the permit invalidated. After an appeals hearing lasting more than 20 days, the permit was upheld, with an administrative judge issuing a 106-page opinion explaining why.

So the Sierra Club appealed again, this time throwing the matter into Fulton County Superior Court in Atlanta, and before the all-knowing bench of Judge Moore.

In identical lockstep with the Sierra Club -- even borrowing verbiage heavily from the club's own position statements to render her scant 19-page opinion -- she invalidated the permit June 30. Judge Moore ruled that CO2 emissions actually are subject to regulation under the federal Clean Air Act.

Really? When did that happen?

Well, it hasn't.

That's because members of Congress and federal regulators are still talking about it -- whether to regulate CO2 and, if so, how to do it.

And right now there's no requirement under any law to reduce CO2 emissions.

Since there is no real law governing CO2 reduction, Judge Moore essentially decided to make the law up herself; and with the bang of a gavel, this irrationally activist judge became the first jurist in the country to connect coal-fired power plants to global warming.

How frightening that Judge Moore has no idea what dreadful developments her decision has wrought for Georgia.

First, the ruling effectively overturns the clean-air permit process for all power plants that would give off any degree of CO2 -- fueled by coal, natural gas, oil, whatever. Since Judge Moore leapfrogged over the Environmental Protection Agency, the state EPD and Congress itself to assert the federal regulation of CO2 -- and with no actual policy in place -- it would render the permit process virtually impossible to navigate.

So with that huge disincentive, new power plants wouldn't get built. What would that mean for Georgians? Higher power bills. Less reliability. Further economic slowdown because current plants won't be able to meet future demands.

It gets worse. Since CO2 already is regulated in Judge Moore's world, in our world it would mean that any construction project of significant size that included the use of CO2-emitting fuels would have to file for a Clean Air Act permit.

Think about all the buildings that use natural gas, from hospitals to office buildings to schools to churches to hotels to malls -- the list is seemingly endless. And Judge Moore's ruling means that if any of those structures are to be built in the future, they would require clean-air permits, which cost an awful lot of time and money to get. That would be a bureaucratic nightmare.

All because of this insane court ruling.

Thankfuly, her decision is being challenged by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and more than 100 utility companies, chambers of commerce, businesses and trade organizations. But that's not new territory for this judge. In the past 10 years, 92 of her decisions have been challenged. Of those, a whopping 40 percent were reversed. In one case, the Georgia Supreme Court had to advise her of what most laymen already know: "A trial court does not have the authority to 'substitute its judgment and discretion for that of the duly elected officials of the city.'" She didn't listen.

The Georgia Court of Appeals should hear the chamber's appeal, and strike down Judge Moore's folly of judicial activism.