Supreme Court Claims Carbon Dioxide is Pollution

On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in a five to four decision that air, and anything in the air, may be considered pollution. The ruling was the conclusion of the case, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and essentially proclaims anything that is found in our air could be categorized as a pollutant. Based on this decision, I would like to propose a formal condemnation against nature and all of the living inhabitants of it. We are beyond the point of political talk and half-measures. Mother Nature must be reigned in.

Before you think I’m being completely irrational, let’s look at what the Supreme Court has actually approved of in this verdict.

The majority decision of Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer laid out why they felt the EPA is partly responsible for climate change and how their actions or inactions have contributed to injury of a particular kind to Massachusetts. In order to reach such a conclusion, several premises must be accepted by these judges.

First, they must assume that human activity is directly responsible for climate change.

Second, they must assume that carbon dioxide emissions are a pollutant and ought to be controlled by the EPA.

Third, they must assume that Massachusetts will be directly and imminently affected by this climate change.

Fourth, they must assume that changes made by the EPA will help alleviate any future problems that arise from climate change.

These judges may hold other assumptions of human effects on climate change, but the previous ones are directly related to this case. The most basic flaw with this entire lawsuit is the assumption that humans are responsible for climate change, something that has not been proven by any scientific measure. This decision is solely based on the political aspect of global warming. Justice Stevens opens his majority opinion with this:

“A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Respected scientists believe the two trends are related.”

He fails to mention that there are also “respected scientists” who believe the two trends are not related as a cause-effect relationship, with the cause being increased carbon dioxide and the effect being a rise in temperature. In this statement he implies that carbon dioxide is a forcing component of climate change – something that it has never been in the past, and that if a scientist does not agree with this assertion, they are not “respected”. He continues:

“For when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat. It is therefore a species – the most important species – of a ‘greenhouse gas.’”

Justice Stevens needs to stick with law because he lacks a fundamental understanding of our atmosphere. It acts nothing like a greenhouse. A greenhouse traps heat by not allowing convection, which is the complete opposite of how our atmosphere works. Convection is the primary reason we experience wind and weather in our atmosphere. So, Stevens (and I assume the rest of the justices who joined in his opinion) is operating with a lack of scientific understanding in a case which heavily relies on scientific evidence in order to deliver an appropriate judgment.

Now to take the position that carbon dioxide is a pollutant is just utter absurdity. Without carbon dioxide we would not be able to live on this planet. It is intricately involved in all aspects of life and to classify it as pollution is akin to saying that natural elements and cycles are dangerous to the welfare of Earth. The justices of the majority opinion formulated their definition of a “pollutant” that endangers public welfare from the Clean Air Act.

“Sec. 302. When used in this Act-

(g) The term "air pollutant" means any air pollution agent or
combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical,
biological, radioactive (including source material, special
nuclear material, and byproduct material) substance or matter
which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air. Such
term includes any precursors to the formation of any air pollut-
ant, to the extent the Administrator has identified such
precursor or precursors for the particular purpose for which the
term "air pollutant" is used.

(h) All language referring to effects on welfare includes, but
is not limited to, effects on soils, water, crops, vegetation,
man-made materials, animals, wildlife, weather, visibility, and
climate, damage to and deterioration of property, and hazards to
transportation, as well as effects on economic values and on
personal comfort and well-being, whether caused by
transformation, conversion, or combination with other air
pollutants.
http://www.epa.gov/air/caa/caa302.txt

From these definitions, they determined that carbon dioxide is 1) a pollutant, and 2) has an effect on climate, and therefore falls under jurisdiction of the EPA. But in order to conclude that carbon dioxide is affecting climate change, you would need to assume that it is now a forcing agent. However, this has not been scientifically proven.

To assume that Massachusetts is imminently threatened by damages from climate change and that the EPA is partly responsible for these changes requires the assumption that carbon dioxide is acting in a way that it never has before, i.e. a pollutant and forcing agent of climate change. In order to give this case the merit of legal standing, the Court needs to believe in unproven theories and broadly interpreted terminology to justify its decisions. They are basing their knowledge of our climate on apparent coincidences and falsely perceived correlations. Each subsequent judgment made on the merits of this case, including and after the initial belief that humans are causing climate change is done so with the misunderstanding or misrepresentation of information.

The ruling that was made in this case is based on nothing more than politics instead of scientific facts.
(I would encourage everyone to read the dissent written by Justice Roberts and Scalia. The link for both the majority opinion and the dissent is at the end of this article.)

Since we know it is now possible to legally brand natural elements as pollution, I would like to begin advocating for an official condemnation of Mother Nature. This is long overdue in view of the fact that she has been polluting the environment for a few billion years. Mother Nature is responsible for many climate changes and natural disasters as a result of her pollution and these disasters have killed and injured innumerable amounts of the world’s human population, caused extinctions of many species, and have ruined many economies as well as the environment in which they thrived.

I would like to propose a cap on all natural carbon emissions to go into effect immediately and I would like to see a ban on all forest fires, volcanic eruptions, decomposing organisms, all further surface exposure, and any other natural occurrence that results in the release of pollutants, including carbon dioxide and methane. If Mother Nature cannot comply, I feel we should begin to offset her by releasing an opposing element into the air that will cancel out her actions. We must maintain equilibrium in nature as we - as human beings - see fit.

Does this sound ridiculous to you? Do you realize how preposterous it is to call carbon dioxide a pollutant?

What is absent from this Supreme Court decision is a rational approach to the matter at hand which seems to have been replaced by an emotional reaction to a potential long-term climate change in which the consequences are completely unknown. We need our justices, who supposedly represent the supreme law of the land, to be balanced, well informed, and logically sound in their deliberations and rulings. This particular decision demonstrates none of these characteristics in the majority opinion written by Justice Stevens.

Clean Air Act: http://www.epa.gov/oar/caa/contents.html

Supreme Court Decision: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf