ENVIRONMENT
A Green Gavel
"This is the worst environmental White House that we've ever had in American history," stated environmental lawyer and activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. this week. Robert Kennedy cited "more than 400 pieces of environmental legislation that have been rolled back by the White House, 'as part of a deliberate concerted effort to eviscerate 30 years of environmental laws.'" "The Bush administration has been gutting key sections of the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, laws that have traditionally had bipartisan support and have done more to protect the health of Americans than any other environmental legislation." Courts are increasingly siding with environmentalists, who have for the past six years "been suing to try to block the changes" President Bush has implemented. "The Supreme Court gave the Bush administration two rebukes on Monday for its global warming and air pollution policies. These rulings were just the most recent examples of the administration's losing streak in court on environmental issues," as two other federal courts recently ruled against Bush's environmental policies. Nonetheless, Bush has indicated an unwillingness to change his administration's approach. As Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) noted, "All the institutions of government are now moving towards recognition of the dangers of global warming, except the Bush Administration."
A 'MOMENTOUS' SUPREME COURT DECISION: "The most crippling hit" to the Bush administration's environmental policies "came from the U.S. Supreme Court" in its first examination of the phenomenon of global warming. "The court ruled 5 to 4 that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated the Clean Air Act by improperly declining to regulate new-vehicle emissions standards to control the pollutants that scientists say contribute to global warming." Environmentalists have hailed the ruling as "a momentous victory... in one of the most important environmental cases ever decided by the Supreme Court." Under Bush, the EPA held "that it lacked authority to regulate greenhouse gases and that even if it did, it might not choose to because of 'numerous areas of scientific uncertainty' about the causes and effects of global warming." In Monday's decision, the high court "ruled that the federal government does indeed have authority to regulate greenhouse gases linked to global warming." The Supreme Court's decision was also a huge victory for states as "California and nearly a dozen other states have adopted their own regulations requiring lower greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. These rules, however, require federal approval, which seemed unlikely as long as the agency could claim that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant -- a claim it can no longer make." Reacting to the Court's ruling, Bush made clear that "he thought his proposal to increase automobile efficiency was sufficient for the moment; he gave no indication that he would ask the EPA to regulate emissions of heat-trapping gases." Furthermore, Bush added his own "caveats" to the decision, asserting that "any regulatory program should not slow economic growth, nor should its benefits to the atmosphere be offset by mounting emissions from China, India and other growing economies."
LOWER COURTS GO GREEN: Last week, a federal judge in California "tossed out new Bush administration rules that gave national forest managers more discretion to approve logging and other commercial projects without lengthy environmental reviews." "The pro-business Bush environmental rules were an attempt to dismantle a policy for national forests and grasslands dating to the Reagan administration, requiring government agencies to maintain viable numbers of plants and wildlife, particularly endangered species." Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the Federal District Court said the U.S. Forest service violated several laws when it restricted the power of forest managers to "decide whether mines, logging operations, cellphone towers or other development would be appropriate uses of forest land." In another case, Judge Robert Chambers of a federal court in West Virginia curbed the government's allowance of the controversial practice of mountaintop removal, a form of strip mining in which coal companies use explosives to essentially remove entire mountains, and "the resulting millions of tons of waste rock, dirt, and vegetation are then dumped into surrounding valleys." (See a satellite picture of mountaintop removal here). Chambers ruled that the U.S Army Corps of Engineers "violated the [Clean Water Act] by issuing mountaintop removal mining permits that allowed headwater streams to be permanently buried." In a "victory for environmentalists," Chambers ruled that "more thorough reviews of the mines’ potential impacts must be done before permits can be approved."
A STRONG WEEK FOR THE ENVIRONMENT: The recent Supreme Court and lower court rulings come just before a major report's release on Friday by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). February's IPCC report represented "history's most definitive statement of the scientific consensus on climate change," concluding global warming is "unequivocal" and human activity is the main driver, "very likely" causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950. Friday's report will further detail the human and environmental impacts of man-made climate change. "Even the most optimistic forecasts say the climate will continue to change and the planet will be irrevocably damaged." The new report indicates that "within two or three decades, there could be 1.5 billion people without enough water," creating "refugee crises like we've never seen." Testament to the importance of the IPCC, Stevens frequently cited its reports in his majority opinion in this week's case as evidence that "the scientific understanding of climate change progressed." Already, the United States is attempting to neuter the language in the IPCC report before its release, reportedly taking "the lead in seeking modifications to the report" and "questioning its scientific basis."
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