Excerpts from today's Reuter's report:
In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that U.S. environmental officials have the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.
By a 5-4 vote, the nation's highest court told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute to climate change.
The high court ruled that such greenhouse gases from motor vehicles fall within the law's definition of an air pollutant.
The ruling in one of the most important environmental cases to reach the Supreme Court marked the first high court decision in a case involving global warming.
President George W. Bush has opposed mandatory controls on greenhouse gases as harmful to the U.S. economy, and the administration instead has called for voluntary programs.
In 2003, the EPA refused to regulate the emissions, saying it lacked the power to do so. Even if it had the power, the EPA said it would be unwise to do it and would impair Bush's ability to negotiate with developing nations to cut emissions.
The states and environmental groups that brought the lawsuit hailed the ruling.
%26quot;As a result of today's landmark ruling, EPA can no longer hide behind the fiction that it lacks any regulatory authority to address the problem of global warming,%26quot; Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said.
Greenhouse gases occur naturally and also are emitted by cars, trucks and factories into the atmosphere. They can trap heat close to Earth's surface like the glass walls of a greenhouse.
Why does Bush always do the incomprehensible, and avoid the logical?
Bush doesn't have two brain cells to rub together.
Why does Bush always do the incomprehensible, and avoid the logical?
He has terrible handlers who don't care how he looks. They have him twisting in the wind. Hope he gets rid of them.
In your glee , I hope you realize, we all emit carbon dioxide.
Bush is too busy trying to figure out how to get
himself out the mess he made in Irag, that is why
all his effort is in this mess he made. His adminis-
tration can handle only so much and the majority
of them are as lost as Bush is, so they're all in the
mess togeather.
Bush's handlers have not instructed him to attend to that. It's not what he was put in power to do.
I saw a small report on the Supreme Court's finding. Aside from the fact that the EPA's right to enforce CO2 emissions standards was affirmed (well, DUH), the Supreme Court found that even if the current theories on global warming are wrong, the catastrophic consequences were too important to be ignored.
