A lawsuit by state lawyers from three East Coast states focuses overdue attention on an insidious effort to categorize carbon dioxide as an air pollutant.
The attorneys-general of Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut this month sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency for not regulating CO2 under the Clean Air Act.
Never mind that the Clean Air Act doesn't include CO2 as a pollutant within its scope, address climate change except by glancing reference, or provide for the type of nationwide regulation that mitigation of CO2 emissions would require.
Politically minded lawyers—which is what state attorneys-general are—always interpret laws to fit their ambitions.
And these politically minded lawyers want to implement national policy on climate change through the judicial system.
The arrogance is breathtaking but goes with the territory. It's the quality of the science that should most raise concern.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It's accumulating in the atmosphere, largely in response to industrialization and the combustion of fossil fuels.
But does that make it a pollutant?
The state lawyers suing EPA insist that it does. They argue that the CO2 build-up threatens to overheat Earth and that, therefore, the compound should be regulated as a pollutant.
This is an extreme position. But it's gaining thoughtless acceptance among some politicians.
CO2 isn't an airborne toxin or precursor to ozone smog, like the pollutants specifically targeted by the Clean Air Act. It's a substance essential to life; in fact, the environment might benefit from having more of it in the atmosphere. And large questions loom over the assumed link between the CO2 build-up and observed warming.
What's more, CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas. It's one of a group of gases accounting for about a tenth of the natural greenhouse effect.
The other 90% of atmospheric warming comes from water vapor and clouds, the latter of which also provide cooling in an interaction still difficult to predict.
If it makes sense to regulate CO2 as an air pollutant because it's a greenhouse gas, it must make sense to treat H2O the same way.
But let's not give politically ambitious lawyers any ideas.
(Online June 13, 2003; author's e-mail: [email protected])
