WASHINGTON, 3 April 2007 — The Supreme Court handed a clear defeat to the Bush administration yesterday, saying that a US government agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, has the power under the clean air law to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.
The ruling came in one of the most important environmental cases to reach the Supreme Court in decades. It marked the first high court decision in a case involving global warming, and its decision to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars is viewed as a strong rebuke to the Bush administration’s policy on global warming. The court’s 5-4 decision said the Clean Air Act gives the EPA the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The court’s four conservative justices — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — dissented.
“Overall the Supreme Court came down today on the side of common sense because we know carbon dioxide has accumulated in our atmosphere to levels that have not been seen for over 650,000 years,” said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists.
“It really is the EPA’s job to protect the public from the consequences of adding a powerful heat-trapping gas to the atmosphere that ultimately will warm up the planet for many centuries,” said Ekwurzel. “One thing that has scientists so concerned is that if the global average temperature increases to 1.2 degrees Celsius above today, we risk inundating low level coastal areas from significant melting from the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets over the long term.”
Greenhouse gases occur naturally and are also emitted by cars, trucks and factories into the atmosphere. They can trap heat close to the Earth’s surface like the glass walls of a greenhouse. Such emissions have risen steeply over the past century and many scientists see a connection between this rise and an increase in global average temperatures and a related increase in extreme weather, wildfires, melting glaciers and other damage to the environment.
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 documentary movie, An Inconvenient Truth — making the case for prompt action on climate change — won an Oscar award. Business leaders are saying they are increasingly open to congressional action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, of which carbon dioxide is the largest. The Bush administration has consistently rejected capping greenhouse gas emissions as bad for business and US workers.
The court ruling is also expected to boost California’s prospects for gaining EPA approval of its own program to limit tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases. Federal law gives California the right to seek approval of standards that are stricter than national norms.
