**** U. S. Supreme Court CLEARS the air! ****

The US Supreme Court, in twin victories for environmentalists and one loss for the Bush Administration, CLEARED the air with its rulings on a couple of environmental cases. The first opinion in Massachusetts v. EPA, held that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate the emission of "greenhouse gases," such as carbon dioxide emitted by automobiles. In the case, 12 states and several environmental groups sued the EPA for "abdicat[ing] its responsibility under the Clean Air Act" to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The Court agreed that "greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act's capacious definition of 'air pollutant,' [and] ... that EPA has the statutory authority to regulate the emission of such gases from new motor vehicles." The Court further stated that the EPA improperly "offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change" and directed that the "EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute."

In the other EPA case, the Court's opinion gave a boost to a federal clean air initiative aimed at forcing utilities to install pollution control equipment on aging coal-fired power plants. The underlying issue in the case, Environmental Defense Fund v. Duke Energy Corp., was whether emissions increases should be measured on an annual basis (an approach favored by the EPA) or an hourly rate (an approach favored by Duke and other utilities)-- the marrying of Prevention of Significant Deterioration program, or PSDs to New Source Performance Standards NSPS after a required review. The Court found that the lower Appeals Court overstepped its authority by implicitly invalidating 1980 Environmental Protection Agency regulations ["any such result must be shown to comport with the Act's restrictions on judicial review of EPA regulations for validity", the Supreme Court ruled], by interpreting the EPA rules in a way that favored Duke, and it's decision "seems to us too far a stretch." As Justice Souter explained: "W]hat these provisions are getting at is a measure of actual operations averaged over time, and the regulatory language simply cannot be squared with a regime" that Duke favors.

Talk about CLEARING the Air today!