WASHINGTON, April 2, 2007
High Court Rebukes Bush On Auto Emissions
In A 5-4 Decision, Supreme Court Decides EPA Can Regulate Greenhouse Gases From Cars
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Play CBS Video Video Court Ruling Hits Automakers Analysts say that the Supreme Court's ruling that the EPA can regulate emissions from cars will have a profound effect on the auto industry. Anthony Mason has more details.
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Video Landmark Ruling On Emissions In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Wyatt Andrews has more on the significance of this ruling.
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Video Car Emissions To Be Reviewed The Supreme Court ordered the federal government to take a closer look at how it regulates carbon dioxide emissions from cars. Susan Roberts reports.
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Carbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas are burned. One way to reduce those emissions is to have more fuel-efficient cars. (AP/CBS)
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Photo Essay A Warming Effect A behind-the-scenes look at the 60 Minutes team's trip to Patagonia, Chile and Antarctica.
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Interactive Global Warming The greenhouse effect, a look at the Kyoto Protocol and a history of the Earth's climate.
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Blog Court Watch CBSNews.com Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen's new blog on the big issues and analyzes important cases of the day.
In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.
Ever since the Bush Administration came to power, the EPA has refused all regulation of global warming emissions — emissions from cars and power plants — saying it lacked the authority, reports CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews.
But Monday's decision was a hard slap to the administration.
Greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion.
"The justices told the White House it hasn't been correctly interpreting the Clean Air Act when it comes to trying to stop global warming, that it has been applying the law too restrictively, not aggressively enough, and that people affected by it have a right to go to court to challenge the way the Bush administration is regulating greenhouse gases," said CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "So it's a major blow to the White House."
The court's four conservative justices — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — dissented.
Many scientists believe greenhouse gases, flowing into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, are leading to a warming of the Earth, rising sea levels and other marked ecological changes.
The Supreme Court ruling has turned the auto industry upside down, reports CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason.
From the outset, U.S. automakers have resisted tougher emissions standards, and the EPA has been on their side. Now, suddenly, the picture has changed.
"It's gonna be more difficult to sell large pickups, sport utilities, the big vehicles on which they make most of their money," said John Casesa, a veteran industry analyst.
The politics of global warming have changed dramatically since the court agreed last year to hear its first global warming case.
"In many ways, the debate has moved beyond this," said Chris Miller, director of the global warming campaign for Greenpeace, one of the environmental groups that sued the EPA. "All the front-runners in the 2008 presidential campaign, both Democrats and Republicans, even the business community, are much further along on this than the Bush administration is."
Democrats took control of Congress last November. The world's leading climate scientists reported in February that global warming is "very likely" caused by man and is so severe that it will "continue for centuries." Former Vice President Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" — making the case for prompt action on climate change — won an Oscar. Business leaders are saying they are increasingly open to congressional action to reduce greenhouse gases emissions, of which carbon dioxide is the largest.
Carbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas are burned. One way to reduce those emissions is to have more fuel-efficient cars.
The court had three questions before it.
The court said yes to the first two questions. On the third, it ordered EPA to re-evaluate its contention it has the discretion not to regulate tailpipe emissions. The court said the agency has so far provided a "laundry list" of reasons that include foreign policy considerations.
"As a result of this ruling now the EPA will have to more fully justify its reasons not to regulate greenhouses gases — something the White House has so far been unwilling to do," Cohen said. "And don't forget that the new Democratically-controlled Congress can put even more pressure on the administration by changing the Clean Air Act to make it more explicit that greenhouses gases ought to be regulated."
The majority said the agency must tie its rationale more closely to the Clean Air Act.
"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Stevens said. He was joined by his liberal colleagues, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter, and the court's swing voter, Justice Anthony Kennedy.
The lawsuit was filed by 12 states and 13 environmental groups that had grown frustrated by the Bush administration's inaction on global warming.
In his dissent, Roberts focused on the issue of standing, whether a party has the right to file a lawsuit.
The court should simply recognize that redress of the kind of grievances spelled out by the state of Massachusetts is the function of Congress and the chief executive, not the federal courts, Roberts said.
His position "involves no judgment on whether global warming exists, what causes it, or the extent of the problem," he said.
The decision also is expected to boost California's prospects for gaining EPA approval of its own program to limit tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases. Federal law considers the state a laboratory on environmental issues and gives California the right to seek approval of standards that are stricter than national norms.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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- Carbon Dioxide gas is colorless. At low concentrations, the gas is odorless. At higher concentrations it has a sharp, acidic odor. It will act as an asphyxiant and an irritant.
Since everyone is obsessed with references, here it is:
http://www.uigi.com/MSDS_gaseous_CO2.html - Reply to this comment
- The (by far) largest part of CO2 or water vapour
you can find in the atmosphere on this planet is not from human activity. What we are talking about is a percent-level increase.
According to the IPCC, 150 billion tonnes of carbon go into the atmosphere from natural processes every year. This is almost 30 times the amount of carbon humans emit.
Moreover, effect of CO2 on temperature cannot be expected to be linear. What should be expected instead is a series of feedback effects that no model can account for nowadays. - Reply to this comment
- "Global warming is a serious problem. The level of CO2 continues to rise year after year. The level of CO2 has been correlated to global average temperatures reasonably well over the last 600,000 years."
Correlated ...
OK: Natality is going down in Europe. You will also
find out that the number of stroks is decreasing ... The obvious conclusion is that babies are brought by storks. - Reply to this comment
- rf35
"Seafang, why do you like to breathe CO2? It smells bad".
Check your facts ... CO2 dosn't smell anything ...
(neither CO which makes it deadly). - Reply to this comment
- Oh yeah, here's the link so you can check it yourself:
http://www.bullnet.co.uk/shops/test/hydrogen.htm
See the chart about a third of the way down the page. - Reply to this comment
- Oh ***! I just did some research. Gasoline engines produce MORE WATER VAPOR than fuel cells! Try again, Seafang!
- Reply to this comment
- Seafang, why do you like to breathe CO2? It smells bad. I'll take the water vapor. And since your post indicates that you don't beleive that human activity is related to global warming, why do you care about water vapor?
I haven't looked this up, but I'd bet money that the sun shining on the ocean surface for 10 hours creates more water vapor than running 10 fuel cell cars for 10 years! - Reply to this comment
- " from canyoutellme "Uh, how is this a loss for the people and the Constitution? The constitution is there to PROTECT the people. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness... remember? ""
That is your quote isn't it.
Please cite me the article and section and paragraph of the United States Constitution, from which you extracted that quotation.
I have that Constitution right in front of me, and I can not find those words anywhere.
Time to go and get yourself an education; it is obvious you do need someone to tell you. - Reply to this comment
- Global warming is a serious problem. The level of CO2 continues to rise year after year. The level of CO2 has been correlated to global average temperatures reasonably well over the last 600,000 years. Global warming has been correlated to periodic mass extinctions over the eons on earth. The CO2 in these cases was provided by natural processes such as volcanic activity
Yes atmospheric CO2 and global warming have been correlated over the last 600,000 years.
And that Ice core data shows that global warming LEADS TO higher levels of atmospheric CO2. In fact CO2 rise is delayed by as much as 6-800 years from the global warming.
Yes CO2 rises AFTER temperatures have risen, and CO2 falls AFTER temperatures have fallen.
So clearly CO2 is not the cause of the warming.
As for present levels of atmospheric CO2, for the last few hundred years we have had the LOWEST levels of atmospheric CO2 that earth has seen in the last 120 million years or so. Way back then the levels were in the 1000-3000 ppm range, and life on earth flourished, despite mass extinctions due to asteroid impacts and the like.
By comparison, todays levels of 280-380 ppm of CO2 are mild.
Now I leave it up to the reader to come up with his own concensus among climate scientists who are prepared to declare that H2O is not the most powerful of ALL GHGs. Good luck on that. - Reply to this comment
- It would be so Ironic if the EPA set the standard lower than it currently is. The court simply said they have the power to regulate. EPA can set a standard of 1 mile per gallon and there is nothing anybody can do about it.
- Reply to this comment
- Well what a wonderful outcome. So the EPA can regulate auto emissions of CO2..."AND OTHER GREENHOUSE GASES."
I do hope the Supremes in future enforce that wording upon the EPA and MAKE them enforce limits on ALL greenhouse gases; not just CO2 and ozone.
In particular; make sure they enforce those restrictions on the most abundant, and by far the most significant GREENHOUSE GAS of all which is well known (by scientific concensus) to be WATER VAPOR.
Water vapor is emitted in large quantities by all internal combustion engiens, and will be emitted in spades by those future HYDROGEN ECONOMY cars which we are going to get ; courtesy of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
So lets put the cap on that massive greenhouse pollutant, before we waste all that money on developing the most polluting cars of all; the Hydrogen cars.
Yes; way to go, Supreme Court; make sure your directive is binding on the EPA for ALL GREENHOUSE GASES, including the WORST pollutant of all H2O - Reply to this comment
- Good for the Supreme Court! But the way the Court works still worries me. Lifelong appointments are NOT a good idea! There needs to be some sort of term limits set for SC Justices. I don't think the general populace should elect them, but presidential appointment followed by Senate confirmation FOR A SET TERM would seem better to me. The reasoning for the current system is that the Justices would outlast whichever party held power in the other branches of government at a given time. But I don%u2019t think this is such a great idea. The will of the American people changes and the Supreme Court needs to have some mechanism to change with it. Maybe 5-6 year staggered terms would help to increase the responsiveness of the Court while preventing a given administration from stacking the Court in their party%u2019s favor.
- Reply to this comment
- the cause of global warming has been the cutting of trees down that produce oxygen and building house,s. Why don,t they dig a hole and jump in it and live there?
- Reply to this comment
- Now if we could get the World Court to rebuke Bu$h on that invasion of Iraq and the countless murdered innocents.
Before you cons jump to the keyboards, Iraq had NOTHING to do with the WTC7 demolition on 9/11... - Reply to this comment
- "So it's a major blow to the White House."
Sweeeeeeet!
Love,
Monica - Reply to this comment
- Checks and Balances at it finest! The Judicial branch tells the Executive branch that the Legislative branch needs to address additional issues with environmental quality. Why did it take so long?!? It is a great day for the country! We have people that don't respect Bush for what he does against terrorism and others who don't respect Gore for what he does against environmental toxicity, but I believe the majority of Americans admire them both! Who wants to live in a world where we have no enemeies, but can't breathe? or live in a world where we can breathe, but can't live civil or peacefully? Most Americans want to breathe and live civil and peacefully. To our citizens of Iraq and other traditional non-democratic societies, "It is great to have two or more political agendas working for us at the same time. This is why we advocate for checks and balances in government." There is room to have it all in the American way.
- Reply to this comment
- Simple solution is for all MOONBATS to walk to work or ride a bicycle. It would do them a world of good, like get them out of their computer caves and into the real world for a while. On second thought, I don't know if the "Real World" could stand the shock! Best keep em in their cave and who knows maybe one of them will invent the 100 MPG vehicle that runs on bat guano!!
- Reply to this comment
- As for the Supreme Court it should be done away with.
A few making rediculous laws for the majority.
Posted by krg12171936
This is certainly one of the most interesting comments I have had the pleasure of reading on this site.
Of course we should 'do away with' one of the three branches of our government. What a great idea!!
However, if it is you goal to 'do away' with the body that makes the 'ridiculous laws for the majority', that would be congress... the Supreme Court does not make laws. - Reply to this comment
- Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak
I'm mocaleo, I'm stupid as h-e-l-l
Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak
Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak
I'm mocaleo, I'm stupid as h-e-l-l
Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak
Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak
I'm mocaleo, I'm stupid as h-e-l-l
Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak Squeak - Reply to this comment
- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are reprobates who will be with us for many years, unfortunately! Thanks to goonMan.
- Reply to this comment
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
