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Split court rules against Bush on greenhouse gases
Even with his now stacked SCOTUS he couldn't win this
Quote:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming.
In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.
Greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion.
The court's four conservative justices -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- dissented.
Many scientists believe greenhouse gases, flowing into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, are leading to a warming of the Earth, rising sea levels and other marked ecological changes.
The politics of global warming have changed dramatically since the court agreed last year to hear its first global warming case.
Democrats took control of Congress last November. The world's leading climate scientists reported in February that global warming is "very likely" caused by man and is so severe that it will "continue for centuries." Former Vice President Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth -- making the case for prompt action on climate change -- won an Oscar. Business leaders are saying they are increasingly open to congressional action to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, of which carbon dioxide is the largest.
Carbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas are burned. One way to reduce those emissions is to have more fuel-efficient cars.
The court had three questions before it.
--Do states have the right to sue the EPA to challenge its decision?
--Does the Clean Air Act give EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases?
--Does EPA have the discretion not to regulate those emissions?
The court said yes to the first two questions. On the third, it ordered EPA to re-evaluate its contention it has the discretion not to regulate tailpipe emissions. The court said the agency has so far provided a "laundry list" of reasons that include foreign policy considerations.
The majority said the agency must tie its rationale more closely to the Clean Air Act.
"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Stevens said. He was joined by his liberal colleagues, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter, and the court's swing voter, Justice Anthony Kennedy.
The lawsuit was filed by 12 states and 13 environmental groups that had grown frustrated by the Bush administration's inaction on global warming.
In his dissent, Roberts focused on the issue of standing, whether a party has the right to file a lawsuit.
The court should simply recognize that redress of the kind of grievances spelled out by the state of Massachusetts is the function of Congress and the chief executive, not the federal courts, Roberts said.
His position "involves no judgment on whether global warming exists, what causes it, or the extent of the problem," he said.
The decision also is expected to boost California's prospects for gaining EPA approval of its own program to limit tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases. Federal law considers the state a laboratory on environmental issues and gives California the right to seek approval of standards that are stricter than national norms.
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You are both missing the point here due to your disbelieve.
You are pushing the interpretation of the ruling to an extreme to ease ridiculing it.
Quote:
EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change
What they said not that Co2 is pollution, but that the EPA could not come up with a logical explanation why they refused to regulate it.
All it would have taken is a reasoned argument, unfortunately reason and logic aren't highly valued by the Bush administration and it must be bad is a court he has stacked with conservatives hand him his butt.
I'm glad to see that the SCOTUS still values logic over ideology ... just
You are both missing the point here due to your disbelieve.
You are pushing the interpretation of the ruling to an extreme to ease ridiculing it.
What they said not that Co2 is pollution, but that the EPA could not come up with a logical explanation why they refused to regulate it.
All it would have taken is a reasoned argument, unfortunately reason and logic aren't highly valued by the Bush administration and it must be bad is a court he has stacked with conservatives hand him his butt.
I'm glad to see that the SCOTUS still values logic over ideology ... just
"Greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion."
What part of that did I misunderstand or spin because of my bias? It very clearly says that C02 is a pollutant.
I have no issue with them saying C02 is a greenhouse gas and we want to limit the releasing of greenhouse gases, that's correct, but it is NOT a pollutant.
That was one of the fundamental disagreements Bush had with prior stuff in this regard, that defining a naturally occurring compound that is a major component of the carbon cycle to be a pollutant is silly. The reason they want to do that is so they can regulate it under the clean air act.
Right and cutting down the rainforests can and has been shown to have a big impact on local climates, nobody disputes that. That's one of my chief complaints with pushing ethanol, people are literally cutting down rainforests so they can plant crops to make ethanol out of, complete idiocy.
Russ - dust is natural as well, but it is regulated as a pollutant.
Or are you saying that since Dust occurs naturally, if someone wanted to kick up continually clouds of dust next to your apartment, you'd be ok with that?
Mercury occurs naturally to - so we can't regulate that as a pollutant either.
Bad news for people who exercise, especially runners. Those bastards are releasing CO2 at double the pace. Just think of the impact of this Saturday's Pat's Run in Tempe. The air over Tempe will be bio-hazard from all of the pollution.
Russ - dust is natural as well, but it is regulated as a pollutant.
Or are you saying that since Dust occurs naturally, if someone wanted to kick up continually clouds of dust next to your apartment, you'd be ok with that?
Mercury occurs naturally to - so we can't regulate that as a pollutant either.
Mercury is regulated because it's poisonous to humans.
Never get involved in a land war in asia and never argue about global warming with Russ.
Russ, you need to talk to the EPA as obviously they did not explain your more reasonable position well. Don't blame me, blame the folks Bush had arguing the case.
All the EPA has to do is explain why they don't need to regulate it ?
Maybe it is silly, but then explain that position is a logical and reasoned why. That is what they have apparently failed to do
again they already did regulate it, the clean air act caused reformulation of gasoline that led to cleaner burning gas.
it also led to MTBE in groundwater and now is leading to ethanol which is now helping destroy rain forests. Maybe the EPA is choosing to not regulate
it because they're afraid of what the outcome of that will be?
If you're going to regulate Co2, ban it, say this is causing global warming and as of such and such date, no cars can emit Co2. People will say that's too dramatic an impact just phase it in, but you can't really do that. Todays cars are designed to burn gasoline, if you don't want to do that you have to retrofit all of today's cars with something else.
There's a guy I see around my neighborhood all the time in a big 4 x 4 that apparently burns biodiesel, he has a "this truck is a vegetarian" sticker on his truck. it's possible, someone just has to decide they're willing to take the consequences and convert us to a non fossil fuel right now.
If you saw 60 minutes last night they did a story on warming and they asked a guy point blank if we stopped all Co2 emissions tomorrow, would the warming stop, and the expert said no, not for quite some time near as we know. If that's true the obvious answer is, stop immediately.
C02 is not poisonous. The problem is it displaces oxygen which leads to brain death in humans. Of course it takes over 5000 parts per million to reach that point in humans and it's currently at about 380 PPM. it's also the 4th most abundant gas in the atmosphere so regulating one source of it seems a little
silly.
If it's that bad, ban it, make it illegal for any car to emit it and be done with it.
Cigarette smoke is much worse for humans than Co2 is.
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