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High court debates global warming

Traffic leaving Portland. The Supreme Court will hear a global warming case that calls for regulation of exhaust fumes. (File Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
David G. Savage Los Angeles Times
Traffic leaving Portland. The Supreme Court will hear a global warming case that calls for regulation of exhaust fumes. (File Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court entered the debate on global warming Monday, agreeing at the urging of environmentalists to rule on whether new cars, trucks and power plants must be further regulated to slow climate change.

The court’s action gave a surprising, if tentative, victory to 12 blue states and a coalition of environmentalists who say the federal government must restrict the exhaust fumes that contribute to global warming. Their appeal accused the Environmental Protection Agency of having “squandered nearly a decade” by failing to act.

The court voted to take up the issue over the objection of the Bush administration. Its lawyers questioned whether the government can and should “embark on the extraordinarily complex and scientifically uncertain task of addressing the global issue of greenhouse gas emissions” by regulating motor vehicles sold in the United States.

The case, to be heard in the fall, could be one of the most important environmental disputes ever to come before the court. If they win, environmental advocates said, automakers could be forced to produce a fleet of vehicles that emit less pollution.

“Everything now hinges on what the Supreme Court does,” said David Bookbinder, a lawyer for the Sierra Club, one of the environmental groups that pressed the issue.

Until now, the threat of global warming has prompted much public debate, but little governmental action.

The legal dispute turns on standards set during the 1970s when Congress adopted the Clear Air Act. One provision requires the government to regulate “any air pollutant” from motor vehicles or power plants that may “endanger public health or welfare” including by affecting the “weather” or “climate.”

In 1999, a group of environmental scientists pointed to this legal standard and petitioned the EPA to set new regulations to confront the problem of global warming. They said the evidence showed that pollutants from cars, trucks and power plants were endangering the public welfare by changing the climate. They called upon the EPA to restrict emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons.

Four years later, the EPA under the Bush administration rejected the petition. It questioned the link between auto emissions and global warming and concluded that new regulations were not required. Last year, that conclusion was upheld in a 2-1 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Usually, federal agencies are given broad leeway to interpret the laws they are supposed to administer. In this case, however, the 12 states joined with environmentalists and went to court to challenge the EPA’s decision. In their appeal to the Supreme Court, they argued that the Clean Air Act required regulation of greenhouse gases and that EPA was defying this requirement.

The 12 states are California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. New York, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., also joined the appeal.