Today the Supreme Court handed down an extremely important case on the environment, Massachusetts v. EPA. In it the Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide/auto emissions as a pollutant. It is forcing the EPA to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and to base its decisions on regulation/non-regulation on applicable law rather than arbitrarily declining to do so. The lawsuit arose as several states sued the EPA to get the federal government to do something about global warming.

The case is a stinging rebuke of Bush’s approach of doing absolutely nothing about climate change. Said Justice Stevens in writing for the majority:

“A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere… EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change.”

For the first time the Court has weighed in on global warming and broadly reviewed national policy on the issue in favorable terms. That’s fantastic, although the 5-4 nature of the decision reminds one of the razor-thin balance of power on the Court; the decision could have easily gone the other way. Nevertheless, the precedent set by the decision is great news as individual states continue their battles against global warming.

Tags: global-warming, massachusetts-v-EPA, supreme-court