As we turn to the second front of Mount Sustainability, I’m going to try something ambitious (or perhaps foolish). I am going to try to make a judgment of the United States Supreme Court interesting.
Wait, wait! No, don’t click that little X at the top of your web browser. Just give me a chance here!
As we march our way up the Benign Emissions front, I want to take us back just a shade over ten years ago. On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court released an opinion called Massachusetts v. EPA. Naturally, you might be wondering why the state of Massachusetts and the Environmental Protection Agency were fighting.
It stemmed from a disagreement over a single sentence in the Clean Air Act, found in Section 202(a)(1): “The [EPA] Administrator shall by regulation prescribe … standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”
Yeah, yeah, I know that was a mind-numbing thing to read (I’m feeling more foolish than ambitious now, but what the heck, let’s press on).
Here’s the breakdown. Back in September 2003, the EPA decided that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were not “air pollutants,” meaning that the EPA didn’t have to regulate them under the Clean Air Act. A number of states concerned about climate change, with Massachusetts in the lead, didn’t take kindly to this determination. Voila, we have a lawsuit!
Three and a half years later, the Supreme Court settled the issue in a 5-4 decision. Justice Stevens wrote the opinion for the majority, which determined that the definition of “air pollutants” under the act was broad enough to include greenhouse gases. Hooray!
Then Justice Stevens went on to address another argument made by the EPA – that even assuming greenhouse gases were pollutants, it would be unwise to regulate them at that time. This is the part of the opinion I find most interesting, so I’m going to quote a part of it (emphasis my own):
“Nor can EPA avoid its statutory obligation by noting the uncertainty surrounding various features of climate change and concluding that it would therefore be better not to regulate at this time …. If the scientific uncertainty is so profound that it precludes EPA from making a reasoned judgment as to whether greenhouse gases contribute to global warming, EPA must say so. That EPA would prefer not to regulate greenhouse gases because of some residual uncertainty … is irrelevant. The statutory question is whether sufficient information exists to make an endangerment finding.”
Sound familiar? Justice Stevens was addressing a common fallacy to which climate change deniers frequently cling. “Look! A few scientists don’t think humans are causing the climate to change! That means we don’t have scientific consensus, so we shouldn’t take action to mitigate greenhouse gases!”
While Justice Stevens’ decision was confined to a particular statute, I think his words ring true beyond this case. Some “residual uncertainty” is not a justification to delay climate action. We have a scientific consensus, and the peer-reviewed science makes it clear that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are not benign emissions.
Well, here we are at the end of the post, and I’m pretty sure I failed. That probably wasn’t interesting, but I hope you agree that it’s at least important.
Next week we turn to the Renewable Energy front. No more court cases, I promise!
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