Court Rejects Effort
by States to Force Bush Administration to Regulate Greenhouse Gases
July 18, 2005 — By John Heilprin, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — States lost a bid Friday
to force the Bush administration to regulate heat-trapping industrial
gases that have been blamed for global warming.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia said the Environmental Protection Agency acted properly when it
rejected a nonprofit group's petition. The group had asked EPA to impose
new controls on carbon dioxide and other automobile pollutants that
scientists say trap heat in the atmosphere like a greenhouse.
Tom Reilly, the Massachusetts attorney general, said the states probably
would ask for the full appeals court to hear the case.
"With each day of inaction, the problem of global warming worsens,"
Reilly said. "We will continue to fight to compel the federal government
to use its legal authority to address this serious problem."
After EPA rejected the group's petition, 12 states and several cities
argued that EPA should regulate those gases under the Clean Air Act and
hadn't justified its decision not to. The three federal appeals judges
ruled otherwise.
Judge A. Raymond Randolph, writing for the panel, and Judge David
Santelle, who disagreed with Randolph on some of the issues in the case,
each sidestepped the larger question of whether EPA lacks authority to
order reductions in greenhouse gases.
In August 2003, the EPA's top lawyer issued an opinion that the agency
lacked that authority, a reversal of a Clinton administration legal
opinion that the gases should be regulated.
The Bush administration used that opinion to justify denying the request
from the nonprofit group, International Center for Technology
Assessment, and other groups seeking new federal controls on auto
emissions.
Randolph said the court assumed for the sake of argument that EPA has
the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants but that
"the question we address is whether EPA properly declined to exercise
that authority."
Randolph said the court should defer to a federal agency's judgment in
policy questions that are "on the frontiers of scientific knowledge."
Judge David Tatel also disagreed with Randolph on some of the issues.
Most notably, he found that greenhouse gases "plainly fall within the
meaning" of air pollutants that should be regulated.
If the EPA administrator finds that the gases contribute to air
pollution that puts the public's health or welfare in danger, Tatel
wrote, "then EPA has authority -- indeed, the obligation -- to regulate
their emissions from motor vehicles."
States challenging the EPA's rejection of that petition were California,
Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New
York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, along with the U.S.
territory of American Samoa and the cities Baltimore, New York and
Washington, D.C.
Reilly said the states were disappointed by the ruling but "heartened"
that Tatel, the only judge to look at the issue of EPA's legal authority
on greenhouse gases, "firmly rejected EPA's claim."
Source: Associated Press |