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NEW
YORK—The US Supreme Court has held that the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must regulate the
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new motor vehicles
or provide a reasonable explanation for its failure to
do so, according to a statement issued by an Ontario,
Canada-based law office.
The
recently decided landmark case of Massachusetts v.
Environmental Protection Agency initially began as a
rulemaking petition brought by 19 private organizations,
which were joined on appeal by the states of
Massachusetts, California and New York, among others,
said a statement which was carried by Bloomberg. It was
issued by Dennis Mahony, an environmental lawyer of
Torys, an international business law firm with 300
lawyers in New York and Ontario.
On April
2, 2007, the Supreme Court decided the case in favor of
these petitioners, acknowledging the relationship
between rising global temperatures and increasing
concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and ruling
that the Clean Air Act allows EPA to regulate GHG
emissions from new motor vehicles.
The
Clean Air Act states that EPA shall regulate the
emission of any air pollutant from new motor vehicles
that in its judgment contributes to air pollution that
may reasonably be expected to endanger public health or
welfare.
In
overturning the decision of the D.C. Circuit—and in
ruling that EPA’s decision not to regulate was
arbitrary, capricious and not in accordance with law—the
Supreme Court considered whether the petitioners,
particularly the State of Massachusetts, had standing to
challenge EPA’s denial of the rulemaking petition,
whether EPA has statutory authority to regulate GHG
emissions from new motor vehicles, and if it does,
whether EPA’s stated reasons for not regulating these
emissions are consistent with the statute.
In a 5-4
decision, the Court ruled that the State of
Massachusetts had standing to challenge EPA’s decision,
particularly because EPA’s refusal to regulate GHG
emissions from new motor vehicles presented a risk of
harm to the state that was both “actual” and
“imminent”—and because that risk could be reduced if the
federal government enacted the regulation that the state
sought. That the effects of climate change are global
did not minimize Massachusetts’s specific interest in
protecting its sovereign territory.
According to the Court, EPA’s refusal to regulate the
emissions at a minimum contributed to Massachusetts’s
injuries, particularly because EPA did not dispute the
causal connection between anthropocentric GHG emissions
and global warming. The Court added that although
regulating motor vehicle emissions may not by itself
reverse global warming, it still has jurisdiction to
decide whether EPA had a duty to take steps to reduce or
slow global warming.
The
Court then ruled that EPA has statutory authority to
regulate GHG emissions from new motor vehicles. The
Court found that GHGs, including carbon dioxide, fit
well within the act’s broad definition of “air
pollutant,” which includes any physical, chemical
substance emitted into the ambient air. It ruled that
the language of the Clean Air Act is intentionally broad
and reflects Congress’s intention to grant EPA the
regulatory flexibility to develop new approaches to
global warming and air pollution. The Court also
rejected EPA’s reasons for not using this authority to
regulate. According to the Court, the statute conditions
EPA’s rulemaking obligation on a judgment of whether an
air pollutant causes or contributes to air pollution
that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public
health or welfare. Yet EPA gave no reasons that would
dispute the link between GHGs and climate change.
Instead, it only offered a “laundry list” of policy
reasons why regulating would conflict with other
administrative priorities, including voluntary executive
branch programs to reduce GHG emissions and the US
President’s role in negotiating reductions with
developing nations, all of which the Court considered
divorced from the statutory text.
The
Court concluded that under the Clean Air Act, EPA could
refuse to regulate GHG emissions only if it found that
such emissions do not cause or contribute to climate
change, a conclusion that would itself be subject to
further judicial review. However, if the EPA finds that
GHGs do cause or contribute to climate change, it must
regulate their emissions.
US
cities develop individual climate strategies
IN a
separate report in New York, US cities are leaping ahead
of the federal government in developing strategies for
climate change.
From New
York City to Seattle, local carbon emission targets are
already beginning to change the lives of millions of
urban dwellers, the Washington Post reported last week.
New York
City taxi drivers, for example, have begun replacing
gas-guzzling cabs with hybrids to comply with a new
directive ordering the city’s fleet of 13,000 cabs to
slash carbon emissions within five years.
A
nationwide poll taken in April showed a third of
Americans now call global warming the single largest
environmental problem. That is double the number from a
year ago, showed a Washington Post-ABC News-Stanford
University survey.
Boulder,
Colorado, has passed a “carbon tax” on electric bills,
while Chicago is experimenting with waterless urinals
and distributing compact fluorescent light bulbs.
Keene,
New Hampshire, has imposed a nonidling policy for cars
when parents drop off and pick up their children from
school and Portland, Oregon, uses water from the city’s
drinking water system to generate electricity.
--Bloomberg |
