Warming ruling squeezes Bush from both sides

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to explain why it has refused to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from cars, putting the Bush administration under pressure from an unusual coalition of environmental groups and leaders of the auto industry to move quickly on global warming.

In a 5-to-4 decision, the court rejected the administration’s argument that it had no legal authority to limit carbon dioxide released from new cars. In a ruling described as a landmark victory for environmental activists, it decided that the EPA does have such authority and that it must give better reasons for not using it than the “laundry list” of “impermissible considerations” it has offered until now.

“We have ended the administration’s denial of reality and defiance of the law,” said Richard Blumenthal, attorney general of Connecticut, one of 12 states that joined a similar number of environmental groups in suing the Bush administration for its refusal to regulate emissions tied to global warming.

In essence, the court handed the administration power it insisted it did not have and did not want. And the administration came under immediate pressure to use that power from an unlikely source as the nation’s biggest automakers joined the chorus of environmental groups and climate scientists calling for the EPA to get moving on greenhouse gases.

New tactics for auto industry
For the automakers, the ruling means a shift in tactics. With the Bush administration having lost the argument that it could not regulate carbon dioxide emissions, automakers now hope that the EPA will enact an industrywide standard before the states enact a patchwork of differing regulations or before the Democratic-controlled Congress can revise the Clean Air Act to include even stronger restrictions.

“The EPA will be part of this process,” said Dave McCurdy, chief executive of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an industry trade group representing General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG, Toyota Motor Corp. and five others.

“There needs to be a national, federal, economy-wide approach to addressing greenhouse gases,” McCurdy said in a statement, which acknowledged that changes in environmental regulations were probably inevitable. He said the auto industry was eager to work with Congress and the EPA to make the changes uniform and “constructive.”

The Bush administration had argued all along that Congress never gave it the power to decide whether carbon dioxide was a pollutant as defined in the federal Clean Air Act, but in an opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the court said it did have such authority.

More important, Stevens sided in unusually strong language with scientists who say that U.S. car emissions do contribute to greenhouse gases, leading to global warming. In doing so, he rebutted the contention of some energy industry officials and Republicans in the administration and Congress that there is no proof of global warming.

The contribution of American cars to global warming is so significant, Stevens wrote, that strong regulations “would slow the pace of global emissions, no matter what happens elsewhere in the world.”

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