Court Provides EPA and People Who Need Clear Air to Breathe With a Victory

Conservatives and Coal Industry:  Upset The Have to Cater to the Current Generation and Future Generations Who Want Clean Air

Lost in all the hoopla over the Supreme Court’s decision in the health care case was the announcement of a Court of Appeals decision that essentially upheld the right of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases and start the United States down the road of preventing such rather important things like massive air pollution and global warming.  If upheld by the Supreme Court and not gutted by a Romney administration, this decision may ultimately be as important as the ACA decision.

The coal industry and electric utilities that burn coal to generate electricity do not want the government to regulate them and do want the government to let them engage in massive pollution.  Of course, this is not what they say, what they say they are interested in is jobs and economic growth.  But the EPA has science on its side, and now it has a court decision on its side.

The court in Washington, D.C., gave the Environmental Protection Agency almost everything it wanted in the 82-page ruling on Tuesday. A three-judge panel unanimously upheld the EPA's central 2009 finding that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide endanger public health and likely have been responsible for global warming over the past half century.

As for those “global warming hoax” people there is this.

After Mr. Obama's EPA followed up on the high-court ruling with new regulations, industry groups sued, saying there was too much uncertainty about global warming for the agency to act as it did.

Tuesday's ruling flatly rejected that contention. The opinion, issued jointly by three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said the EPA "marshaled substantial scientific evidence" to support its findings. "The existence of some uncertainty does not, without more, warrant invalidation of an endangerment finding," the court wrote.

One of the most important things about this ruling was its authors.

Chief Judge David Sentelle, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, and Judges Judith Rogers and David Tatel, both appointees of President Bill Clinton, issued the decision.

Judge Santelle is a strong conservative, and the fact that he participated in this decision is convincing evidence that it was one based on law and science.  As for the politicians

Mr. Romney's camp this month unveiled a television ad in Ohio, a major coal-mining state, that envisions the first months of a Romney administration and says, "By day 100, President Romney repeals regulations that are strangling our energy industry and costing us jobs." Mr. Romney has said that he wants to amend the Clean Air Act to strip the EPA of its authority to regulate carbon dioxide.

Maybe Mr. Romney will succeed, which of course will end any speculation that Republicans care about future generations, you know, the ones they say they care about when fighting government spending which increases the national debt.  But that’s ok, nobody really believes Republicans when they say things like that anyway.