|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
The Supreme Court Takes on the EPA E. Ralph Hostetter Dissection of the State of Massachusetts, et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency, et al. decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court on April 2, 2007, took three-plus readings. The entire 60 pages included the majority opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens with concurring Justices Berger, Ginsberg, Kennedy and Souter; and two dissenting opinions, one by Chief Justice John Roberts and the other by Justice Antonin Scalia, both joined by Justices Alito and Thomas. The case came to the U.S. Supreme Court from the District of Columbia Court of Appeals where it had been rejected by a 2-to-1 vote. The majority opinion by the D.C. court cited two reasons: The case lacked standing in the Court of Appeals and no harm to the public had been proved as required by Article III of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court's majority opinion began: "A well documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere . . . "Calling global warming the most pressing environmental challenge of our time," the plaintiffs in the case "allege . . . the EPA has abdicated its responsibility under the Clean Air Act to regulate the emissions of four greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide." In answer to petitioners' complaint, EPA replied: "EPA concluded alternatively in its petition denial that it lacked authority under 7521(a)(1) to regulate new vehicle emissions because carbon dioxide is not an air pollutant." The majority opinion established standing for the State of Massachusetts in the place of an individual as required by Article III. "Given that procedural right and Massachusetts' stake in protecting its quasi-sovereign interests, the Commonwealth is entitled to special solicitudes in our standing analysis." Story Continues Below
The centerpiece of the majority opinion is the threat posed to Massachusetts coastal regions based on climate scientist Michael MacCracken's Declaration that: "Qualified scientific experts involved in climate change research" have reached a "strong consensus that global warming threatens precipitate rise in sea levels by the end of the century. "According to petitioners' unchallenged affidavits, global sea levels rose somewhere between 10 and 16 centimeters (3.9 inches and 7.8 inches) over the 20th century as a result of global warming (MacCracken). "These rising seas have already begun to swallow Massachusetts coast land (Paul Kirshen). [Note: Kirshen is a professor at Tufts University.] Because the Commonwealth owns a substantial portion of the state's coast property, it has alleged a particularized injury in its capacity as a landowner. "The severity of that injury will only increase over the course of the next century. If sea levels continue to rise as predicted, one Massachusetts official believes that a significant fraction of coastal property will be either permanently lost through periodic storm surge or flooding events. Remediation costs alone, petitioners allege, could run well into the hundreds of millions of dollars. "EPA does not dispute the existence of a causal connection between man-made greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. At a minimum, therefore, EPA's refusal to regulate such emissions contributes to Massachusetts' injuries . . . "In sum — at least according to petitioners' uncontested affidavits, the rise in sea levels associated with global warming has already harmed and will continue to harm Massachusetts." The opinion of the Court summarizes with: "We need not and do not reach the question whether on remand EPA must make an endangerment finding, we hold only that EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute." Dissenters comments from Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas follow: "This Court's standing jurisprudence simply recognizes that redress of grievance of the sort at issue here is the function of Congress and the Chief Executive . . . The realities make it pure conjecture to suppose that EPA regulation of new automobile emissions will likely prevent loss of Massachusetts coastal land . . . The Constitutional role of the Courts, however, is to decide concrete cases — not to serve as a convenient forum for public debates . . . If petitioners' particularized injury is loss of coastal land, it is that injury that must be actual or immediate, not conjectural or hyptothetical . . . "There is nothing in the petitioners' 43 standing declarations and accompanying exhibits to support an inference of actual loss of Massachusetts coastal land from 20th century global sea level increases. It is pure conjecture." Massachusetts v. EPA accomplished little or nothing either in proving or declaring CO2 a pollutant or in saving the coastline of Massachusetts from a precipitate rise in sea level by 10 to 20 centimeters over the last century. It provides no assistance for the global warmers' push for a carbon offset tax. Present day "environmentalists" have no real desire to reduce levels of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere. If they were sincere environmentalists, they would promote the building of atomic energy plants across the United States which could provide the safest, cleanest, most economical method of the production of electrical energy. Instead, they have opposed the use of atomic energy, forcing the United States to use coal-fired electrical generating plants which produce 60 percent of all manmade CO2 emissions in the country. Not only would atomic energy reduce manmade CO2 by 60 percent, the savings to the American public in electricity costs would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Ralph Hostetter, a prominent businessman and agricultural publisher, also is a national and local award-winning columnist. He welcomes comments on his columns sent by e-mail to eralphhostetter@yahoo.com.
Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Print Page 
Forward Page 
|
| All Rights Reserved © 2012 NewsMax.Com |