EPA must consider global warming again
on Apr 2, 2007 at 10:12 am
Ruling 5-4, the Supreme Court on Monday found that the federal government had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases that may contribute to global warming, and must examine anew the scientific evidence of a link between those gases contained in the exhausts of new cars and trucks and climate change. In the most important environmental ruling in years, the Court rebuffed the Environmental Protection Agency’s claim that regulating those gases was beyond its authority, and the agency’s claim that it need not take action even if it did have the power to do so. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.
That decision came in Massachusetts v. EPA (05-1120). The Court also concluded that the state of Massachusetts had a right to sue to challenge EPA on the climate change issue because it had shown it would be affected directly by global warming. Relying primarily on a 1907 ruling (Georgia v. Tennnessee Copper Co.), the Court said it was noteworthy that the key party challenging EPA on the issue was a sovereign state. The Court quoted from that opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: “The state…has the last word as to whether its mountains shall be stripped of their forests and its inhabitants shall breathe pure air.” Congress, the Court said, has ordered EPA to protect Massachusetts and others by laying down standards to regulate air pollutants.
This was one of two rulings on the merits Monday.
The second decision, also in an environmental case, upheld EPA’s view that changes in power plants that may contribute to air pollution must be done only with a permit if there is an annual increase in emissions. The Court rejected the Fourth Circuit Court’s view that the permit requirement applied only if there is an hourly increase in emissions. The case was Environmental Defense Fund v. Duke Energy Corp. (05-848). The decision was written by Justice David H. Souter. The vote was unanimous, although Justice Clarence Thomas filed a separate concurring opinion.
In the global warming decision, the Court majority had no apparent difficulty concluding that carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” emitted from the exhausts of new cars and trucks were pollutants that Congress had in mind in requiring regulation of dirty air under the Clean Air Act. It noted that, as a consequence of global warming, “rising seas have already begun to swallow Massachusetts’ coastal land. The Court also said that, while global warming has many causes, it is not necessary that EPA be able to reverse global warming by dealing with all of the causes. It at least has a duty to take steps to slow or reduce the climate change, Stevens wrote.
The majority opinion’s discussion of the nature of the problem of global warming left little doubt that, if it had been faced with deciding on Monday whether EPA should use the authority it has under the Clean Air Act, the answer would have been “yes.” All of the references to “unchallenged affidavits” filed in the case suggest that the Court was persuaded of the link between auto exhausts and rising temperatures of the earth, especially its oceans.
But the Court did not go that far. Instead, it ordered the case back to EPA, with specific instructions that it may no longer rely on policy judgments in order to avoid regulating auto exhaust fumes that contribute to global warming. Those judgments, Stevens wrote, “have nothing to do with whether greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change. Still less do they amount to a reasoned justificaztion for declining to form a scientific judgment.”
What EPA thus must do next is to analyze the scientific data to determine whether greenhouse gases are a “danger” to the global environment. “We need not and do not reach the question whether on remand EPA must make an endangerment finding, or whether policy concerns can inform EPA’s actions in the event that it makes such a finding…We hold only that EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute” — the Clean Air Act, the majority said.
Joining in the Stevens opinion were Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy and David H. Souter. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., filed a dissent, joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Scalia also dissented in an opinion joined by the three others. The Roberts opinion argued that the cases were not properly in Court because no one had a right to bring the challenge to EPA. Scalia’s separate opinion in dissent disputed the Court on the merits, concluding that the agency appropriately had declined to regulate greenhouse gases for policy reasons.
