The Kelo Five Go Green

Our very own Chris Horner is in Human Events today on this week’s Massachusetts v. EPA SCOTUS decision on the regulation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act:

The plaintiffs argued not just unique and demonstrable harm from climate change, but from sea level rise directly attributable to EPA declining to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from new automobiles under the Clean Air Act. The EPA accurately claimed that no such authority is found in a plain reading of the act and — citing the National Academies of Science — that the science is quite uncertain.

A 5-4 majority — the “Kelo Five” — concluded, however, that many factors other than statutory language and admissions of uncertainty are at play in such momentous times as these. They concluded — without an iota of support, as Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out — that “rising seas are already beginning to swallow Massachusetts’ coastal land,” and that an EPA rule on new tailpipes would remedy that. Such whoppers are rarely found outside of an Al Gore movie.

Worse, these justices decided they had had enough of the Executive Branch negotiating possible coordinated international approaches to this issue. Equally tiresome, apparently, was the legislative debate over — and serial rejection of — regulations of the kind contemplated in the Kyoto Protocol, or “global warming” treaty, eschewed by the Senate for nigh on a decade.

The whole this is here.