Regulating Emissions

Cleaner air, compliments of the Supreme Court

THE SUPREME Court handed down rulings yesterday in a pair of environmental cases, one truly substantial and one merely exciting. Both should lead to considerable reductions in air pollution.

First, the more significant. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, among other petitioners, prevailed in its challenge of the Environmental Protection Agency's refusal to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases, the pollutants that contribute to global warming. The EPA maintained that existing statutes do not give it the power to regulate the greenhouse gases emitted by cars. And even if they did, the agency claimed it has wide discretion under the law to decline to regulate those emissions.

The majority tossed out both of those arguments. Citing the obligation that the EPA has under the Clean Air Act to regulate "any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles" that "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare," the court found that the EPA has authority over greenhouse gases emitted from cars and has little discretion in choosing whether or not to regulate them. The EPA can decline to regulate such emissions "only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do," the majority wrote. Given the global consensus on the science of climate change, it would be difficult for the Bush EPA to do either.

The second ruling concerns EPA requirements placed on energy firms as they upgrade power stations. Though sporadically enforced, current rules require companies that want to make plant modifications that increase pollution to make upgrades in pollution-fighting equipment. Duke Energy, a power company in the Carolinas, claimed that the EPA should measure pollution increases in a way that would have allowed the company to evade the requirement. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Duke's favor, allowing the plaintiff to bypass the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has exclusive jurisdiction over all such cases. The justices wisely repudiated this sidestepping of the D.C. Circuit and upheld the common-sense definition of "increase" that the EPA sought to enforce.

Both decisions cement the essential role that federal officials have in regulating harmful emissions, and both should lead to more robust enforcement of America's clean-air laws.