The Supreme Court Rules on Global Warming

EPA Is Obligated to Regulate Greenhouse Gases, Five Justices Agree

In a 5-4 ruling Monday, the Supreme Court majority wrote that the EPA had offered no good reasons for its refusal to regulate greenhouse gases, while dissenting conservatives argued that the case was no place for judicial intervention.

Washington Post environment reporter Juliet Eilperin was online Tuesday, April 3 at 1 p.m. ET to answer readers questions about the ruling and its potential impact.

Top Court Orders EPA to Reconsider Regulating Emissions (Post, April 2)

The transcript follows.

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College Park, Md.: Will the court's decision force the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases or will it force the EPA to reconsider regulating GGs? Also, if the EPA does end up regulating GGs, will that make the currently proposed global warming bills in Congress irrelevant?

Juliet Eilperin: That's a good question. It will force EPA to consider whether to regulate greenhouse gases, but the ruling will not force the agency to actually impose mandatory limits.

This decision will not halt what's happening in Congress -- in fact, it likely will serve as an impetus for congressional action because most of the parties involved, including electric utilities and automakers, don't want the EPA to come up with a system on its own. They would prefer for Congress to craft a solution, so that's where everyone's focus will be in the months to come.

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Anonymous: This administration is known for not changing its stances on important issues. There seems little or no chance that the EPA will suddenly start vigorous crackdowns on greenhouse emissions. The White House seems to feel this is, first and foremost, an economic issue, and one which could turn off conservative supporters. Why would it do anything but the minimal amount of activity necessary to comply with the law (assuming it does even that)? One will, of course, continue to hear the refrain that the President takes the issue very seriously.

Juliet Eilperin: You are right in the sense that President Bush has been consistent in saying he opposes mandatory limits on carbon dioxide on the grounds that it would hurt the economy, and this ruling may do little to change that. However, now that Democrats control Congress they will do their best to force the issue by crafting legislation and passing it, so that Bush will face the choice of whether to veto a cap on carbon or not. Also, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) intends to bring EPA officials before her panel later this month to question them on how they plan to respond to the Court's decision-that's another way Democrats will pressure the White House to act.

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Alexandria, Va.: Juliet -- Is there a possibility that the Administration might attempt to make lemonade out of the lemons they received from the Supreme Court yesterday by claiming that they already have the authority to regulate green house gases and that comprehensive climate change legislation now is unnecessary? They would then be free to implement a much weaker policy than Congress might force on them.

Juliet Eilperin: That's a very good question. It's true that the administration could try to craft a cap on carbon dioxide more to its liking in the coming months and try to preempt congressional action, though the EPA has given no indication that it's going to do that.

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Alexandria, Va.: Preface: I am not a lawyer and I think the federal government should control greenhouse gases in some fashion (tax or cap-and-trade, or both). That said, I am somewhat skeptical of the legal arguments supporting the majority decision. What do you think of Robert's view that the majority employed a "sleight of hand" to justify its decision? Do you think this case will have other ramifications beyond climate change (e.g., standing doctrine changes)? Thanks.

Juliet Eilperin: I don't think I'm qualified to give a legal opinion on the dissent, but I will say that I was interested to read in the majority opinion how Stevens wrote that Massachusetts did have standing because the state faced imminent harm from climate change, and did not have the option of forcing greenhouse gas reductions in say, Rhode Island. So it's safe to say the majority did address the issue of standing in its opinion.

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Detroit: Could one tell from the questions that the Supreme Court justices were asking if they were well-informed about global warming? I am a scientist, and it still astounds me that there is such a gap, even now, between what I read in the scientific literature about the impending global warming catastrophe for future generations and what the public and U.S. governmental elected officials seem to know about it.

Juliet Eilperin: I attended the oral arguments in this case and I would say that one justice, Justice Scalia, made a point of saying how little he knew about climate science (he got confused at one point about the difference between certain levels in the atmosphere). In the majority opinion Stevens made a point of referring to some of the scientific conclusions outlined in a friend of the Court brief, so it's clear that he and other justices did look at the current scientific debate while deliberating on the case.

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Beautiful Silver Spring, Md.: I favor decisive government action to control carbon dioxide emissions, but I'm worried that the Clean Air Act may not be a good framework in which to regulate them. Do you think this ruling will intensify pressure on Congress to come up with a separate and perhaps more appropriate legislative authority regarding CO2 emissions?

Juliet Eilperin: Yes, as I mentioned before I think that very few people think EPA alone should chart the nation's climate change policy. But some environmentalists concluding that filing a petition concerning greenhouse gas emissions from cars was the best way to force the government to act on this issue -- it was more of a legal strategy than a policy-oriented strategy.

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Crystal City, Va.: This decision is a full-on rebuke of the Bush White House environmental policy, isn't it? Despite their denials, despite their sneering attitude toward the science, they got smacked. Do you see any hope that the Bush EPA now will be forced to act? Will the EPA get the money it needs to do anything useful? Is Steve Johnson just another politico?

Juliet Eilperin: I'll answer your question about the current EPA administrator, Steve Johnson, because some readers may not be familiar with him. Steve Johnson is a career scientist who took over EPA when Michael Leavitt left to head Health and Human Services, and he never has broken publicly with the administration's consistent line that mandatory limits on carbon dioxide are not needed to combat global warming.

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Vienna, Va.: This monumental case makes it hard on the EPA not to regulate greenhouse gases. However, the amount that the EPA may decide to regulate also is an important factor for the success of this case. Given the solid scientific evidence for global warming, will it be reasonable to expect that the EPA not only to give the go-ahead for leading states to regulate GGs, but also to set a minimum for all states?

Juliet Eilperin: Again, I think Congress likely will set the cap for greenhouse gases across the country. However, one of the key questions EPA faces right now is whether to grant California and ten other states, which together comprise one-third of the U.S. auto market, a waiver to enact regulations that would cut the carbon dioxide emissions from new cars by 30 percent by 2016. EPA recently sent California officials a letter saying the agency was waiting to learn the outcome of the Supreme Court case before issuing or denying a waiver. Now, EPA has to make a decision on that. Incidentally Maryland is poised to adopt the same cap on car emissions in the near future, as are New Mexico and Arizona.

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Cincinnati: What do you think about the majority's holding on standing? I like the result of the decision, but I question the reasoning on standing.

Juliet Eilperin: Again, I'm very wary of expounding on the legal merits of the ruling, as that's not my area of expertise. But I would say that officials from states, cities and towns across the country are passing resolutions and adopting policies on climate change, in large part because they already are seeing some of the effects of global warming in their communities. This, in turn, has put pressure on Washington to act.

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Ashburn, Va.: Now that the court decided that EPA has the authority to regulate CO2 emissions, but did not require EPA to "make an endangerment finding," could this ruling have the unintended consequence of invalidating states' CO2 emission laws because of federal supremacy? Could a company challenge the legality of California's CO2 law on the grounds that Congress has not given California an exemption to have more stringent CO2 controls than required by the EPA?

Juliet Eilperin: I don't know how that question will be resolved, though I imagine there will be litigation surrounding it. I would say that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and other state leaders may be willing to defer to a national cap-and-trade system assuming they considered it rigorous enough. Also, California has enjoyed more leeway than other states in setting policies under the Clean Air Act (this policy goes back years and stems from the fact that the state used to have such poor air quality). So it may end up that California would be allowed to have a stricter carbon cap than other states.

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Glen Arm, Md.: Hello. Thanks for giving readers a chance to ask questions about this major victory for the people of the United States. My question is why is Scalia such a partisan hypocrite -- for a strict constitutionalist, this ruling should have been a no-brainier (regardless of agreeing or not agreeing). The primary purpose of the Supreme Court as laid out in the traditions of our legal system is for the court to determine if a law passed by Congress is being interpreted by the Executive Branch in a manner consistent with both the intent and letter of the law as written by Congress. Yet Scalia claims the court has no right to do this -- "He (Scalia) said the court 'has no business substituting its own desired outcome for the reasoned judgment of the responsible agency.' "

That is the primary function of the Court! What gives -- is Scalia someone who will violate any principle (states' rights, the strict and literal reading of the Constitution) to support Republican whims, or does he still believe in the Divine Right of Kings argument about heads of state who can do no wrong?

Juliet Eilperin: Perhaps other readers might want to comment on this question. I would say, however, that part of Scalia's argument in his dissent was that the administration already had adopted a climate change policy, and just because some states might not like that policy that did not mean that the administration entirely lacked an approach to global warming. So that's part of what he was trying to convey in that section of his dissent.

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Fairfax, Va.: Other than the infamous Reagan years where he actively tried to close EPA, is the failed Bush administration next worst in terms of abiding by the laws of the U.S.? The career staff at the EPA must be jumping with joy at this latest rebuke, hoping to return to actual environmental protection. Is Bill Ruckelshaus available to come back again and return EPA to the right path?

Juliet Eilperin: I haven't had a chance to interview rank-and-file EPA employees about this decision, so I can't speculate as to what they think of it. I would say, however, that Bill Ruckelshaus is unlikely to come back to head EPA, though he remains active in environmental issues in the Pacific Northwest.

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Washington, D.C.: Hi Juliet, and thanks. Does this ruling have any significance beyond ruling that CO2 is a Clean Air Act pollutant? For example, is this a major administrative law case that substantially changes the powers of federal agencies to interpret the laws, or is this a run-of-the-mill application of the usual (Chevron) deference test?

Juliet Eilperin: I don't know how much significance the decision has in terms of administrative law, though I did interview former EPA Administrator Carol Browner yesterday, and she told me she thought it was significant in terms of how it would affect agencies' ability to interpret laws.

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San Jose, Calif.: Juliet, from what I have read it appears that the Supreme Court said that an elected official cannot tell the EPA to ignore the Clean Air Act without sufficient evidence or simply because he/she does not believe the evidence exists that certain gases are not likely "to endanger public health or welfare." Given the recent substantiation that the Justice Department has become highly politicized, does this Supreme Court decision set precedent to allow border states, for example, to sue the Justice Department for not enforcing immigration laws simply because the POTUS does not believe immigration law is a priority for the Justice Department?

Juliet Eilperin: That's a very good question and I don't know the answer to it. I imagine that some border states might explore a legal claim to that effect, though I don't know whether they would succeed. Also, I think a number of border state leaders are looking for Congress to act on the issue of administration, rather than looking for a Justice Department solution to the problem.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Are there any cases now before the Supreme Court that could cause the EPA to be more aggressive in enforcing the Clean Water Act?

Juliet Eilperin: I'm checking on this question and if I get an answer in the next couple of minutes I'll let you know.

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Juliet Eilperin: Thanks for all the good questions, I'm signing off now.

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