"Emergency" is a spectrum.

Would you be OK with one specific generation station temporarily emitting 3x more than legal limit (e.g., from the hours of 2pm to 6pm) if the alternative is a 5% increase in absolute probability of a multi-day regional blackout? What about a 10% increase? Where is your red line?

Isn't the US in a perpetual state of emergency?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...