The Supreme Court Helps EPA Join the Movement

Permit us to reverse the order of an old quotation thus:

“The wheels of justice grind exceeding fine, but they grind slow.”

Sometimes exceeding slow, as in the decision of the United States Supreme Court in a decision that took 10 years to reach puberty.

The story starts in 1999 when a group of environmental and clean-energy organizations filed a rulemaking petition asking the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, from new motor vehicles, citing the Clean Air Act.

The EPA after public discussion got around to denying the petition in 2003. They took four years to decide to do nothing!

The petitioner organizations plus a few states and local governments took the EPA’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. which, in a 2-1 decision, denied the petition for review.
Fortunately the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the importance of the case and granted a petition for certiorari thereby, according to the New York Law Journal, “setting the stage for the nation’s first authoritative ruling on global warming under the Clean Air Act.”

To the satisfaction of environmentalists world over the Court found in favor of the petitioners and that EPA has authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles and further that EPA’s “denial of the petition to do so was arbitrary and capricious and not in accordance with the law.”

This decision was rendered in April 2007. The date of this writing is April. 2009. Experts said at the time of the decision that EPA had plenty of remaining “wiggle room” and that strict enforcement of motor vehicle clean emissions was clearly going to be “downstream.”

Doesn’t it make one wonder back to the time when Big Autos – GM-Ford-Chrysler all decided not to compete with the Japanese small cars because the cost to retool would have created lasting damage to the industry?

Well, big auto makers – how are Toshiba and Yamaha and Nissan and Mitsubishi doing? Have they needed big money bailouts from their government?

One must conclude, to be honest, that EPA is in no hurry to force Big American Autos to clean up their act – So it’s up to the president to push FERC to push EPA-

Once Again – Let’s Go Mr. President