In what is likely to be the most important environmental case ever decided by the Supreme Court, several states and environmental groups are pushing for the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emitted from cars as a pollutant on the basis of it being a threat to public health because of global warming. The Bush administration is predictably arguing that carbon dioxide does not meet the definition of a pollutant and should therefore remain free of EPA control. It fears, of course, that allowing EPA regulation of automobile carbon dioxide will open the door to regulation of carbon emitted by the energy industry that is so cozy with the administration.

In the face of overwhelming evidence that global warming is a reality here and now, and that many species of wildlife and even economies and businesses are desperately trying to adapt to climate change, the Bush administration continues to keep its head stuck in its collective ass about something that poses an extreme danger not just to public health but to all of civilization as we know it. This has led individual states to take the lead in the global warming fight–by enabling carbon trading, imposing industrial restrictions, and by using the courts to get the federal government to do something, anything, to begin reducing US emissions.

My hope is that the new Democratic Congress will be much more environmentally aware, and that it will exert much needed pressure on the President to stop living in la-la land as usual and begin taking concrete steps to fight this problem. The Supreme Court case could also force Bush’s hand. The case, Massachusetts vs. EPA, is scheduled to be handed down next year.

Tags: bush, congress, environment, EPA, global-warming, supreme-court