Supreme Court issues key decision on global warming

By Michael J.W. Stickings

WaPo:

The Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration yesterday for refusing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, siding with environmentalists in the court's first examination of the phenomenon of global warming.

The court ruled 5 to 4 that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by improperly declining to regulate new-vehicle emissions standards to control the pollutants that scientists say contribute to global warming.

The issue at stake in the case, one of two yesterday that the court decided in favor of environmentalists, is somewhat narrow. But environmentalists and some lawmakers said it could serve as a turning point, placing new pressure on the Bush administration to address global warming and adding to the political momentum that the issue has received because of Democratic control of Congress and a desire from the corporate community for a comprehensive government response to the issue.

I previously addressed this case -- Commonwealth of Massachusetts et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et al. -- here. On the details of the decision, I'll defer once again to Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog:

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 [for the majority].

It is somewhat misleading to say that "global warming has many causes" -- this may be true, to an extent, but one of the key causes, and certainly the cause related to this case, is human emission of greenhouse gases -- but, nonetheless, as Denniston suggests, this is "the most important environmental ruling in years". It could very well be the thin end of the wedge that leads to political action to combat global warming.

In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Roberts -- and I quote Denniston again -- "argued that the cases were not properly in Court because no one had a right to bring the challenge to EPA". Still, he at least acknowledged that global warming may be "the most pressing environmental problem of our time". In a separate dissenting opinion, Scalia (along with Roberts, Thomas, and Alito) defended the EPA's policy decision not to regulate emissions standards.

The ball is now back in the EPA's court. More broadly, though, it is in Congress's. With Democrats now in control, it must lead the way against an administration that barely even admits there's a problem at all.