The Court Rules on Warming

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It would be hard to overstate the importance of yesterday’s ruling by the Supreme Court that the federal government has the authority to regulate the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by motor vehicles.

It is a victory for a world whose environment seems increasingly threatened by climate change. It is a vindication for states like California that chose not to wait for the federal government and acted to limit emissions that contribute to global warming. And it should feed the growing momentum on Capitol Hill for mandatory limits on carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas.

The 5-to-4 ruling was a rebuke to the Bush administration and its passive approach to the warming threat. The ruling does not require the government to regulate greenhouse gases. But it instructs the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate emissions, urges it to pay attention to the scientific evidence and says that if it takes the same stance, it has to come up with better reasons than its current “laundry list” of excuses.

The ruling also demolishes President Bush’s main justification for not acting — his argument that because the Clean Air Act does not specifically mention greenhouse gases, the executive branch has no authority to regulate them. The president has cited other reasons for not acting, including costs. But his narrow reading of the Clean Air Act has always been his ace in the hole.

The court offered a much more “capacious” reading of the act, as Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. The plaintiffs — 12 states and 13 environmental groups — had argued, and the court agreed, that while the act does not specifically mention greenhouse gases, it gives the federal government clear jurisdiction over “any air pollutant” that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger “public health or welfare.” This interpretation was first set forth by Carol Browner, administrator of the E.P.A. under President Clinton, and remained agency policy until Mr. Bush reversed it in 2001.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/opinion/03tues1.html