Tom had this to share today:

I know Dick Cheney and former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond—and for that matter, Michael Crichton—say no deal. Maybe you do, too. That is, global warming—or not. Hence the picture above is a report, not an OpEd. Apple blossoms, Boston Public Garden, 1 January 2007.

I happen to be convinced that climate change is a serious matter. The real question, in my not so humble opinion, is what do we do about it. I fear that environmentalists and anti-corporate liberals want to use the crisis to push through their own political agenda. At the same time, clearly the friends of industrial mega-corporations tend to be in a campaign of denial.

It’s frustrating. The longer we fail to have a credible strategy the more costly the ultimate corrective behavior is going to be. How long until we actually have some sensible dialogue on this topic?

Following up on yesterday’s post, tThe NYT’s coverage of the Supreme Court hearing on Global Warming continues:

On one level, the argument was about the meaning of the Clean Air Act, which the Environmental Protection Agency maintains does not treat carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases as air pollutants and thus does not give the agency the authority to regulate them.

On another level, the argument was about whether the dozen states, three cities and many environmental groups that went to federal court to challenge the agency’s position had legal standing to pursue their lawsuit.

Intriguing. On the issue of standing:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., along with Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr., expressed strong doubts that the plaintiffs, represented by Assistant Attorney General James R. Milkey of Massachusetts, could meet those interrelated conditions by showing that global climate change presented a sufficiently tangible and imminent danger that could be adequately addressed by regulating emissions from new cars and trucks.

“You have to show the harm is imminent,” Justice Scalia instructed Mr. Milkey, asking, “I mean, when is the cataclysm?”

Mr. Milkey replied, “It’s not so much a cataclysm as ongoing harm,” arguing that Massachusetts, New York, and other coastal states faced losing “sovereign territory” to rising sea levels. “So the harm is already occurring,” he said. “It is ongoing, and it will happen well into the future.”

I doubt Scalia’s hyperbole is going to carry the day. After all, harm need not be cataclysmic to be regulatable. The Times also points out that the claim that Congress didn’t intend for the EPA to regulate CO2 seems particularly specious. The attorney for the EPA didn’t seem particularly effective on this point:

Mr. Garre referred several times to “the conclusion the agency reached,” an unusual locution that seemed something short of the full embrace that lawyers from the solicitor general’s office usually offer the agencies whose positions they defend.The Bush administration’s conclusion that the Clean Air Act does not authorize the E.P.A. to address climate change marked an about-face from the agency’s previous view of its legal authority.

Still at the end of the day, it appears that we can’t yet predict the outcome:

By the end of the argument there appeared a strong likelihood that the court would divide 5 to 4 on the standing question, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy holding the deciding vote. His relatively few comments were ambiguous.

For now, we wait while the justices work through the details and develop their decision. Either way, it will make for an interesting news day.

Climate change is a mess.

Not just because of the environmental impact, but because of its politicization. We can’t even get the name right.

Environmentalists want to call it Global Warming. Industrialists want to call it bogus. The facts are that the climate is changing and we are likely responsible.

I’ve attended the last two California Climate Change Research Conferences as well as last year’s U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) Workshop on Climate Science in Support of Decision Making. All three were chock full of hard, scientific evidence from dozens and dozens of research institutions around the world. The climate is changing, but it isn’t necessarily warming. In some places, it is cooling, like in the orange belt on the eastern coast of the US where the frost line has steadily moved southward, shrinking the climate for growing oranges in that area. For Savannah, Georgia, climate change means a global cooling and no more orange groves.

The NYT today brings us a story that highlights both the political tomfoolery around this topic as well as a ray of hope that we might see some honest traction on the issue this year. The Supreme Court will be hearing a case brought by twelve states against the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to do its job regulating greenhouse gases. The case seems pretty straightforward. The Bush Administration’s stance is anything but:

A group of 12 states, including New York and Massachusetts, is suing the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to properly do its job. These states, backed by environmental groups and scientists, say that the Clean Air Act requires the E.P.A. to impose limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by new cars. These gases are a major contributor to the “greenhouse effect” that is dangerously heating up the planet.

The Bush administration insists that the E.P.A. does not have the power to limit these gases. It argues that they are not “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act. Alternatively, it contends that the court should dismiss the case because the states do not have “standing,” since they cannot show that they will be specifically harmed by the agency’s failure to regulate greenhouse gases.

A plain reading of the Clean Air Act shows that the states are right. The act says that the E.P.A. “shall” set standards for “any air pollutant” that in its judgment causes or contributes to air pollution that “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” The word “welfare,” the law says, includes “climate” and “weather.” The E.P.A. makes an array of specious arguments about why the act does not mean what it expressly says. But it has no right to refuse to do what Congress said it “shall” do.

What’s ridiculous is that the EPA is the agency that should be addressing this problem. How they address it, what solutions they use, and any regulations they enact are policy decisions. Those decisions will need to be worked out in the time honored way. But to date, the EPA has simply denied that it has the authority to do so, rather than accept its authority and craft a series of regulations.

Indeed, they could craft a series of regulations that suck, that do little or nothing to help the real problem while letting entrenched interests get away with continued, unsustainably harmful emissions. But they haven’t even done that. Instead, they have embraced the Bush culture of denial and simply refused to do their job.

I, for one, hope the states prevail in the case. I’d like to see some arm of the federal government take up the issue of finding a solution to climate change that fits with our national interests, rather than blindly denying the need to do anything.

Defining a working solution will be a challenging problem, quite possibly the defining problem of the 21st century. It’s time to start figuring it out.