Global fallout

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on yesterday's Supreme Court decision affirming the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases and to put teeth in the regulation of power plants:

The Bush Administration is becoming increasingly isolated in its refusal to take action to prevent global warming. The scientific consensus on global warming is rock solid. The House and Senate are moving ahead. The Administration insisted that the Environmental Protection Agency’s hands were tied, but the Supreme Court today debunked that argument. It’s time for the Administration to join the search for solutions to climate change.

Regarding pollutants from power plants and factories, the Administration has used the regulatory process as a backdoor way to rewrite clean air laws so that the President’s corporate allies don’t have to upgrade their air pollution controls when they upgrade their plants. The Supreme Court put a stop to this practice today. We will all breathe more freely—literally—as a result.

Senator Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works:

This decision puts the wind at our back. It takes away the excuse the administration has been using for not taking action to deal with global warming pollution. We will be calling the EPA before the committee later this month to ask them how they plan to use their authority under the Clean Air Act to begin to address the challenge of global warming. We now have a two-track process for addressing global warming – comprehensive legislation and administrative action.

More reactions to Massachusetts v. EPA.