SCOTUS Says EPA Can Regulate Carbon

ThanatosMinor writes "In a 5-4 decision today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, saying that the EPA's reasons for not doing so in the past were 'arbitrary, capricious or otherwise not in accordance with law.' The ruling does not require the EPA to regulate carbon. But concerns about global climate change and its ties to human activity did appear to be deciding factors in the case." The AP coverage stresses that the ruling upholds the right of states to sue the Federal government over issues of global warming.

Comments

Not about Global Warming

[Brandybuck]

I know that many of you are cheering that the SCOTUS turned Green and environmentalist, but that's not the case. This ruling isn't about global warming, or carbon, or even Al Gore's haircut. The ruling merely says that an executive department must stay within the bounds of a legislative statute. That the department happens to be the EPA and the statute the Clean Air Act is merely incidental.

To quote: "We hold only that EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute."

Dissent

[Dirck_the_Noorman]

From Scalia's dissent: The Court's alarm over global warming may or may not be justified, but it ought not distort the outcome of this litigation. This is a straightforward administrative-law case, in which Congress has passed a malleable statute giving broad discretion, not to us but to an executive agency. No matter how important the underlying policy issues at stake, this Court has no business substituting its own desired outcome for the reasoned judgment of the responsible agency. From Roberts' dissent: The realities make it pure conjecture to suppose that EPA regulation of new automobile emissions will likely prevent the loss of Massachusetts coastal land...The mismatch suggests that petitioners' true goal for this litigation may be more symbolic than anything else. The constitutional role of the courts, however, is to decide concrete cases--not to serve as a convenient forum for policy debates. See Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U. S. 464, 472 (1982) ("[Standing] tends to assure that the legal questions presented to the court will be resolved, not in the rarified atmosphere of a debating society, but in a concrete factual context conducive to a realistic appreciation of the consequences of judicial action")...The limitation of the judicial power to cases and controversies "is crucial in maintaining the tripartite allocation of power set forth in the Constitution." http://tinyurl.com/yttruw