The suit before the Supreme Court
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Posted on November 29, 2006
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological hope, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
As visitors to the blog know, the Supreme Court is today hearing arguments in the suit filed by 12 states against the federal government in an attempt to force the Environmental Protection Agency to take action on climate change by regulating carbon emissions.
I found this good summary of the case in my email queue and want to share it with you. It comes from the good folks at the Center for American Progress. This is an issue that we can all do something about by working politically to support the suit. Let’s be sure it is on the radar screen of the new Congress to be sworn in come January.
Courting Action On Climate Change
Campaigning for president in 2000, George W. Bush pledged to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. After taking office, Bush broke his promise . Six years later, nothing has been done to regulate carbon dioxide emissions in the United States at the federal level. Now there is a chance the courts could force the Bush administration to take action. A group of 12 states has sued the Bush administration , arguing that the Clean Air Act requires the government to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles. The outcome of the case will “likely determine whether the [Environmental Protection Agency] can regulate [greenhouse gas emissions] from power plants and other industries” as well. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in this case, which the Houston Chronicle bills as “perhaps the most significant environmental case ever to reach its marbled halls.”
IT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE MEANING OF ‘ANY’ IS: The New York Times notes that the Bush Administration “has been on a six-year campaign to expand its powers , often beyond what the Constitution allows.” But in this case, it’s arguing that “it lacks the power to slow global warming by limiting the emission of harmful gases.” The Clean Air Act gives the EPA the authority “to regulate emissions of ‘any air pollutant ‘ that ‘may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.’” Further, “air pollutants” are defined in the Clean Air Act as “any physical [or] chemical…substance or matter emitted into…the ambient air.” Congress defined “welfare” to include “effects on weather and climate.” The Bush administration’s argument is that it is unclear whether the Clean Air Act allows for the regulation of carbon dioxide — a chemical substance emitted into air that affects weather and climate.
IT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE MEANING OF ‘SHALL’ IS: The fall-back position of the Bush administration is even if it can regulate carbon dioxide emissions, it doesn’t have to. Again, the language of the Clean Air Act is very clear. The law stipulates that the EPA “‘shall ‘ regulate any pollutant from new motor vehicles that it expects to do harm.” So if carbon dioxide meets that definition, the Bush administration must act.
CLIMATE SCIENTISTS FIGHT BACK: The Bush administration has also argued that the impact of carbon dioxide on climate is uncertain. In the lower courts, the administration relied exclusively on a 2001 National Academy of Sciences/National Research Counsel report called Climate Change Science to support its claim of uncertainty. At the Supreme Court, the climate scientists who wrote the report are fighting back. In an amicus brief, they say that the EPA has “misrepresented the findings of Climate Change Science by selectively quoting statements about uncertainty while ignoring statements of certainty and near-certainty, thus giving the appearance of far more fundamental uncertainty than stated in the NAS/NRC report. EPA then concluded that ‘it is inappropriate to regulate GHG emissions from motor vehicles…until more is understood about the causes, extent, and significance of climate change,’ implying that there is no risk in waiting or future research, a conclusion sharply inconsistent with the plain language of Climate Change Science.” Actually, “Climate Change Science establishes that there was and is sufficient scientific evidence to enable EPA to make a determination under…the Clean Air Act that greenhouse gas emissions ‘may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.’”
THEY CALL IT A LEGAL ARGUMENT. WE CALL IT TRIPE. Last spring, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) launched advertisements attacking Al Gore’s global warming movie. The commercials, funded by ExxonMobil and other big oil companies, promote carbon dioxide emissions. The tag line: “CO2: They call it pollution. We call it life .” CEI is now defending the administration’s position with the same arguments. The brief filed by the CEI says that, by the logic of the climate scientists, we should have started regulating carbon dioxide “at the turn of the last century .” If CO2 had been regulated beginning in 1900, CEI argues, “the world would have lost many of the benefits of industrialization, from advances in transportation, agriculture, and technology to the scientific progress made possible by the expanding capital of growing economies.” (Never mind that the provision of the Clean Air Act at issue — the entire basis for the lawsuit — wasn’t law until 1977.)
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Thank you, Margaret, for these clear elements regarding the case before the Supreme Court.
Some are not convinced? I found a report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change regarding the current scientific acceptance of the reality. I guess it depends on what you read and those to whom you listen–as was the case before invading Iraq.