ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Supreme Court hears arguments this week in a case that could order the Bush administration to change course in how it deals with the threat of global warming.
A dozen states as well as environmental groups and large cities are trying to convince the court that the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate, as a matter of public health, the amount of carbon dioxide that comes from vehicles.
Carbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas are burned. It is the principal “greenhouse” gas that many scientists think is flowing into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, leading to a warming of the Earth and widespread ecological changes. One way to reduce those emissions is to have cleaner-burning cars.
The Bush administration intends to argue before the court Wednesday that the EPA lacks the power under the anti-pollution Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide, which is a harmless gas that humans and other animals breathe out. The agency contends that even if it did have such authority, it would have discretion under the law on how to address the problem without imposing emission controls.
The states, led by Massachusetts, and more than a dozen environmental groups insist the 1970 law makes clear that carbon dioxide poses a threat to public health and thus is subject to regulation as a pollutant such as lead and smog-causing chemicals.
A sharply divided federal appeals court ruled last year in favor of the EPA. But in June, the Supreme Court decided to take up the case, plunging for the first time into the politically charged debate over global warming. The ruling next year is expected to be one of the court’s most important involving the environment.
“Global warming is the most pressing environmental issue of our time, and the decision by the court on this case will make a deep and lasting impact for generations to come,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly.
David Bookbinder, an attorney for the Sierra Club, says a legal clarification of the EPA’s authority could determine whether the current administration must regulate carbon-dioxide emissions and whether a future administration will be able to demand such limits.
At issue for now is pollution from automobiles. But the ruling indirectly may affect how the agency deals with carbon dioxide that comes from electric power plants.
In a separate lawsuit, the EPA says the Clean Air Act also prevents it from regulating such emissions from those plants. That claim would be undercut, Mr. Bookbinder says, if the high court rules in the states’ favor in the auto-emissions case.
President Bush has rejected calls to regulate carbon dioxide. He favors voluntary steps by industry and development of new technologies to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.
“We still have very strong reservations about an overarching, one-size-fits-all mandate about carbon,” James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, recently told a group of reporters.
The administration says in court papers that the EPA should not be required to “embark on the extraordinarily complex and scientifically uncertain task of addressing the global issue of greenhouse-gas emissions” when other ways are available to tackle climate change.
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