Landmark Greenhouse Gas Ruling

And so we return to honesty; what a concept! Word came yesterday that the Environmental Protection Agency has ruled carbon dioxide and four other greenhouse gases "pollutants that threaten public health and welfare." See the article in Time here. What a difference a change in political administrations can make to the findings of science, or at least to the freedom of scientists to report the findings their research has supported all along.

Congress will now decide whether to pass the most extensive clean air bill in twenty years, since the acid rain and ozone hole issues were at the forefront. You can read the Associated Press article on it as printed in my local Fresno Bee here.

The finding is the outgrowth of a Supreme Court case, Massachusetts v. EPA, that was decided in 2007 on a 5-4 vote. In that case, the state of Massachusetts, joined by other states, argued that the Bush-era EPA's refusal to certify the harmfulness of CO2, given its contributions to global warming, was a dereliction of its chartered duty to protect the people of the United States from air pollution. You can read about the case in Oyez, the Supreme Court's official publication.

Even after the Court's ruling, policy change was stymied for another year and a half by the Bush Administration's strategy of delay and obfuscation. It is remarkable how quickly the EPA thereafter moved once the Obama Administration assumed office and the ideological blinders were taken off. Chances are that Congress will now move quickly. That is because now that the finding has been made, there are two ways regulations can be imposed to implement a remedy. One is for the EPA to develop regulations on its own. In the absence of congressional action, that is what will happen. But no one knows what might come of that. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass, has introduced the American Clean Energy and Security Act. In cooperation with Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman, D-Calif, the 648-bill attempts not only to regulate CO2 sources but to "wean the nation off foreign oil imports and to create a new clean energy economy."

No doubt there will be political horse trading on the matter. But at least it must now be based on an understanding that a problem exists and can no longer be conveniently ignored because unpleasant facts cannot be admitted. If conservative lawmakers want to water curbs down due to their possible effect on business they will have to defend their positions on those grounds, not on the specious grounds that no problem exists. And if inadequate remedies are erected they can again be the subject of additional legal suits.

It is refreshing when deceit gives way to fact as a basis for policy discussion. The nation and the world will reap increasing benefits the more this path is followed. We were truly in an Orwellian world when a bureau called the Environmental Protection Agency was the body obstructing the protection of the environment. This is but one example of how we have, thankfully, entered a new era.