Supreme Court rebukes Bush administration on carbon emissions, as pressure from Europe grows
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
This just in — the Supreme Court ruled this morning on the suit brought by 12 states against the federal government for its failure to regulate the carbon emissions that are causing and will cause damage to their states.
You can read about it at the NY Times website here.
This is an important victory, a narrow one (5-4) but significant in terms of giving a new leg-up to efforts to get the feds to implement a regulatory regimen to cut back on emissions.
We posted about this last November when the court heard arguments in the case. There are links to articles there that will provide more background on the legal issues involved.
So, something to celebrate this week. A small step, but another sign that the political winds in this country are shifting on one of the most critical issue of our times.
Meanwhile, pressure on the US grows from other fronts. Environmental leaders in Europe, in a sharp rebuke to the lack of US action on greenhouse gas emissions, are demanding that US government change its attitude and get busy about supporting international treaties to address global warming. The call came as environmental leaders from around the world met at a United Nations conference on climate change in Brussels.
Leaders are anticipating the release of the next in a series of reports on the impacts of climate change from the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Scheduled for release later this week, it will look at regional impacts and is said to have devastating predictions of what will be occurring in the some of the poorest countries of our world, where hundreds of millions of human lives will be threatened. It will also note the glaring disparities and inequities in nations’ abilities to cope with the impacts. For more, go here.
We will have more to post on this later in the week. Stay tuned.
[tags] global warming, climate change, greenhouse emissions, supreme court, suit filed by northeast states against the EPA [/tags]
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