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After more than 20 years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finally set federal limits on how much mercury pollution power plants can release into the atmosphere. The fact that the power industry has been able to dump unlimited amounts of mercury and other toxics into the skies (and eventually into the ocean and tuna) without penalty for so long is mind-boggling.

Unless, that is, you ask industry groups and their friends in Congress, who are already parroting the same talking points they bring out every time a new pollution control appears — despite the fact that the Clean Air Act turns out to be a bargain for America over and over again.

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Republicans in the U.S. Congress are gearing up to block any major move by the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases—even though the Supreme Court ordered the agency to do so back in 2007. And even though the Congress itself is clearly not going to do anything else to address the problem in the next two years.

But yesterday we learned there’s a paradox at the heart of this obstructionist strategy. If the EPA doesn’t act or is hamstrung—and if Congress continues to dawdle—then guess what? A new global warming case just taken up by the Supreme Court may therefore stand a better chance of surviving the highest level of review—thus providing another possible way of restricting and punishing the polluters who are contributing to climate change.

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Lawyers for the Alaska Native coastal village of Kivalina, which is being forced to relocate because of flooding caused by the changing Arctic climate, filed suit in federal court arguing that 5 oil companies, 14 electric utilities and the country’s largest coal company were responsible for the village’s woes.

The suit is the latest effort to hold companies like BP America, Chevron, Peabody Energy, Duke Energy and the Southern Company responsible for the impact of global warming…In an unusual move, those five companies and three other defendants — the Exxon Mobil Corporation, American Electric Power and the Conoco Phillips Company — are also accused of conspiracy.

“There has been a long campaign by power, coal and oil companies to mislead the public about the science of global warming,” the suit says

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American Electric Power, a major electric utility, is set to announce the largest demonstration yet of capturing carbon dioxide from a coal-fired power plant and pumping it deep underground. Experts consider the approach, known as sequestration, essential to reining in climate change by barring gas from the atmospheric blanket that promotes global warming.