News-Letter

Media Credit: Matt Hansen [Click to enlarge]

In a major victory for environmentalists, the U.S. Supreme Court has finally weighed in on the debate about global warming. On Monday, the Court determined with a 5-4 vote that, under the conditions of the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is required to regulate greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

This decision broadens the EPA's role in the fight against global warming, but represents a setback for the Bush Administration.

Carbon emissions have long been tagged as the main culprit behind global warming, but the government has been slow to act. In 1999, a collection of state officials and environmental organizations filed petitions urging the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases.

They argued that greenhouses gases can "reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare," and therefore should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The EPA refused, claiming that it lacked the necessary authority and scientific justification to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The case went to court as Massachusetts v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

After an eight-year legal struggle, the Supreme Court has ruled that the EPA must act to control greenhouse gas emissions unless it can prove that they do not contribute to climate change.

This is a decision that many environmentalists have been eagerly anticipating. If the case had gone the other way, the Supreme Court could have undermined efforts across the nation to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Many states have signed on to the Clean Car Act, legislation that allows for regulations on tail pipe emissions, and a few have been challenged with lawsuits. The resulting court cases between large automobile manufacturers and states, including California and Massachusetts, were put on hold in order to hear the Supreme Court's opinion.

The favorable ruling gave these state-led campaigns a cause to celebrate. California attorney general and former governor Jerry Brown called the ruling a "resounding affirmation of California's actions to address global warming."

These state efforts cropped up in response to the lack of federal action towards global warming in the past decade, specifically its hands-off approach to the automotive industry.

President Bush, despite having acknowledged carbon dioxide as a pollutant and having promised in 2000 and 2004 to regulate emissions, has reversed his stance and has yet to agree with the theory of catastrophic climate change.

Although he called for the United States to "increase the supply of alternative fuels" and "modify fuel economy standards for cars" in his 2007 State of the Union address, President Bush has maintained that the EPA is not permitted to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

The Supreme Court has disagreed with this stance on purely legal grounds. The majority opinion found that the Clean Air Act is a "clear statutory command" that the EPA must respect. The Court did not offer a definitive opinion on the issue of global warming.

The dissenting minority, led by Chief Justice Roberts, held that the state of Massachusetts lacked the grounds to sue, since it cannot prove that its "injury" (damage caused by global warming) is directly linked to emissions from motor vehicles.

Environmentalists are playing this decision as a rebuke to the Bush Administration's stance on global warming.

However, James Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, found it "relatively inconsequential" since "the president is already committed to regulatory action" as seen in his State of the Union address in January.

Although its importance as a political gesture can be debated, the ruling will have clear ramifications for the automotive industry. The only way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is to use less fuel.

As a result of this ruling, tighter restrictions on fuel consumption, especially vehicle gas mileage, will continue to be enforced in the near future.

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