U.S. ENVIRONMENTALISTS KNOCK ONE OUT OF THE PARK

Supreme Court rules global warming exists, and EPA should protect states from it

In what may be a landmark environmental decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that the EPA has the legal mandate to regulate the gases that contribute to global warming.

Author: Dorothy Kosich
Posted: Tuesday , 03 Apr 2007

RENO, NV -

Although the U.S. Congress can't pass the legislation to regulate it, and the Bush Administration refuses to admit it exists, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Monday that global warming is real, and that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts lost valuable shoreline because of its effects.

The issue was, pardon the pun, so hot, that it required one majority and two dissenting opinions to explain it. Remember this particular case citation: Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (549 U.S. 2007). Americans will be reading, interpreting and citing this one for years.

It began as a simple question. Did the federal court of appeals have jurisdiction to weigh in on the fight between Massachusetts and the Environmental Protection Agency as to if EPA is legally mandated to regulate global warming? You betcha, answered Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote in the majority opinion of the Supreme Court.

"A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," Stevens declared to a nation that refused to ratify the Kyoto Treaty. "Calling global warming ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time, a group of States, local governments and private organizations, alleged in a petition for certiorari that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has abdicated its responsibility under the Clean Air Act to regulate the emissions of four greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide."

"Specifically, the petitions asked us to answer two questions concerning the meaning of §202(a)(1) of the Act: whether EPA has the statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles; and if so, whether its stated reasons for refusing to do so are consistent with the statutes," Stevens said.

"In response, EPA supported by 10 intervening States and six trade associations, correctly argued that we may not address those two questions unless at least one petitioner has standing to invoke our jurisdiction under Article II of the Constitution." The high court ruled it definitely did have jurisdiction, reversed the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remanded the case for further proceedings.

In its arguments, the EPA claimed that, contrary to the opinion of its former general counsels, "the Clean Air Act does not authorize EPA to address global climate change...and that even if the agency had the authority to set up greenhouse gas emission standards, it would be unwise to do so at this time."

Massachusetts argued that Congress ordered the EPA to protect Massachusetts when Congress enacted regulations applicable to controlling emissions of air pollutant from new motor vehicle engines.

The state asserted that the rise in sea levels associated with global warming has already harmed and will continue to harm Massachusetts. The state contended that even more environmental damage in yet to come because the EPA refuses to regulate emissions contributing to global warming. As the Supreme Court concluded, "At a minimum, therefore, EPA's refusal to regulate such emissions contributes to Massachusetts' injuries."

MINORITY OPINIONS

Chief Justice John Roberts conceded in his dissension that global warming may "ultimately affect nearly everyone on the planet in some potentially adverse way, and it may be that governments have done too little to address it. It is not a problem, however, that has escaped the attention of policymakers in the Executive and Legislature Branches of our government, who continue to consider regulatory, legislative, and treated-based means of addressing global climate change."

Roberts noted that the petitioners apparently came to the courts claiming broad injury because they really are dissatisfied with the progress of the issue in the elected branches. Nevertheless, he specified, "aside from a single conclusory statement, there is nothing in the petitioners' 43 standing declarations and accompanying an inference of actual loss of Massachusetts coastal land from 20^th century global sea level increases. It is pure conjecture."

He scolded his fellow justices, accusing them of ignoring "the complexities of global warming, and does so by now...using the dire nature of global warming itself as a bootstrap for finding causation and redressability."

"In other words, do not worry that other countries will contribute far more to global warming than will U.S. automobile emissions; someone is bound to invent something, and places like the People's Republic of China or India will surely require use of the new technology, regardless of cost," Roberts declared with more than a hit of sarcasm.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Anton Scalia adamantly declared that he holds "that this Court has no jurisdiction to decide this case because petitioners lack standing."

"The Court's alarm over global warming may or may not be justified, but it ought not distort the outcome of this litigation," Scalia asserted, adding "This is a straight-forward administrative-law case."

"No matter how important the underlying policy issues at stake, this Court has no business substituting its own desired outcome for the reasoned judgment of the responsible agency," he concluded.

REACTION

Environmentalists called the decision a big victory for the plant and a "stunning rebuke to the Bush Administration."

EPA Press Secretary Jennifer Woods told the Christian Science Monitor that the agency is reviewing the decision to determine its next course of action.

The trade newspaper Argus Air Daily suggested that the decision "has far wider implications for the broader energy economy and upcoming regulation could incorporate the universe of U.S. carbon sources. With this 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court may have kicked down the door to greenhouse gas regulation in the United States and has added to the likelihood of broader legislative action on global warming in the near term."

Chicago-based The Heartland Institute declared that "the U.S. Supreme Court today substituted its scientific judgment for that of USEPA scientists. ...Once past the rhetoric, however, all the Court did was order USEPA to issue a more ‘reasoned explanation' for its refusal to regulate greenhouse gases."

When the EPA does explain its reluctance to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, "the Supreme Court should refrain from imposing its lay views regarding global warming on EPA, Heartland Senior Fellow for Environmental Policy James M. Taylor concluded.

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