Tighten your gas caps!
The impact of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions is a big scientific uncertainty. Some climatologists say that continuous carbon dioxide emissions will warm the earth enough to melt the polar ice caps and bury the entire coastal regions under water. Others think that the consequences will be less drastic.
On April 2nd, the Supreme Court ruled that provisions within the federal Clean Air Act provide authority for the Environmental Protection Agency to set CO2 emissions standards for new vehicles nationwide.
The EPA has consistantly declined to include carbon dioxide among the pollutants that it regulates in accordance with the Clean Air Act. Massachusetts, eleven other states, three cities, and thirteen environmental organizations challenged that EPA position, arguing that the angency’s failure to act endangers the “public health or welfare.”
Questions are still remaining as to whether the plaintiffs even possessed legal standing to make such a charge. Courts may only hear cases where there exists a clear casual connection between personal injury and a defendant’s illegal conduct and where a ruling to cease that conduct would prevent further injury.
More that a dozen other states are in the process of adopting or have already passed plans similar to California’s auto emissions reductions, meant to begin in 2009.