Supreme Court orders EPA to regulate car emissions

This is a major case. From The Washington Post:

The Supreme Court today ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, narrowly siding with 12 states and various environmental groups in a battle with the Bush administration over global warming.

In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled after a four-year court battle that the EPA has "a statutory obligation" under the Clean Air Act to regulate cars' emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It said the agency based its refusal to do so on "impermissible considerations" in an arbitrary and capricious way and that it must take a fresh look at the issue, grounding its reasons for action or inaction on the law.

The ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA represented a sharp rebuke to the Bush administration, which has steadfastly resisted mandatory limits on greenhouse gases on grounds that such restrictions would harm the U.S. economy. The administration has also disputed scientific evidence that global warming is a largely man-made phenomenon, contending that the jury is still out on the extent of the role that natural factors are playing in the current climate change trend.

In reaching its decision, the court's majority ruled that carbon dioxide and other emissions that trap heat in the earth's atmosphere fit the definition of "air pollutants" under the Clean Air Act and that the government thus has the authority to regulate them.

"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. Joining him were Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Anthony M. Kennedy.

Dissenting were the four most conservative members of the court: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

What is important about this case is that it forces the EPA to set standards for regulating "greenhouse gases" emissions on the auto industry. The Bush administration has been hiding behind two arguments in resisting such greenhouse gases regulations--that such regulations would harm the U.S. economy, and that there is no scientific evidence supporting greenhouse gases as causing global warming. The Supreme Court has rejected the EPA, and the Bush administration's, arguments on this environmental issue. Now the EPA is being forced to set standards on these gases, thus requiring the auto industry to develop technologies reducing such gases to be incorporated into new cars for sale in the U.S. Now the Bush administration's EPA will probably set the most lax standards they can for curbing greenhouse gases on the auto industry. But if a Democratic president is elected in 2008, then you are going to see an EPA that will institute much stronger standards for curbing greenhouse gases on the auto industry. This is going to force the auto industry to develop new technologies to make their cars more environmentally friendly.

This is going to be interesting to watch.