Naming our poison

Excuse me, but did the Supreme Court just inject morality into a scientific debate?

Thought I should ask.

Massachusetts v. EPA is a long decision (pdf here via David Bernstein), but it was generating blogospheric commentary even before the decision. Greenie Watch featured this cartoon:

globtemp.JPG

And now that it's a done deal, there's a lot more reaction.

Here's the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels:

This surely will open up a massive number of subsidiary cases. What levels of carbon dioxide emissions, if any, are allowed without being labeled pollutants? There is very little in our society that does not have some relationship to the production of carbon dioxide. Make no mistake -- we have now entered the era where the courts will enter into almost every aspect of our lives.

And Cato's Mark Moller:

The decision suggests that American carmakers may face the equivalent of Kyoto global warming standards, imposed by judicial fiat, despite Congress's umpteen rejections of the Kyoto regime. In the process, the Court's decision guts important separation of powers principles, which require regulatory decisions of this magnitude to be made by Congress, not federal judges.

While I try not to succumb to hyperbole such as that used by outraged citizen (who wrote an op-ed denouncing the complacency of "we the cattle"), the overreaching of the court strikes me as astonishing in scope.

Common sense suggests (to me at least) that carbon dioxide is not a poison, as it is not only a source of virtually all life on this planet, but every one of us exhales it every time we breathe. Labeling it a poison is a profound act with the most profound implications.

I say this because the theory of anthropogenic global warming is at this point still a scientific one, and not a moral one.

My concern is that the decision to call CO2 a poison (which pollution is by definition) goes to the very essence of morality. Is the labeling of an omnipresent substance a poison something to be casually entrusted to five unelected men? Even assuming that C02 is a poison, is poison labeling their function under the Constitution? I don't see any such grant of power anywhere.

Nevertheless, the following statements are now the law of the land:

...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."

[...]

...greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act's capacious definition of "air pollutant"....

I wish I could say "speak for yourselves, Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer!" But they seem to have spoken for me.

I think they have perpetrated an outrage, and once again tortured the constitution.

But then, I admit my bias. I think drug laws are unconstitutional too. (Although I will grant that drugs like heroin and cocaine are not the same thing as the air we exhale.) However, to stick with the drug analogy for a moment, suppose some new substance came along, as LSD did when Albert Hoffman stumbled onto it in 1939. As we all know, the use of that drug eventually took on cult proportions. Laws were passed, and LSD was declared illegal. Now we have the DEA. If a new drug came along and both Congress and the DEA failed to regulate it, would it then be the role of the Supreme Court to step in and tell the DEA to regulate the drug? How? Simply by declaring it evil? Would that not be the court manufacturing new morality?

I'm not saying I like the idea of unconstitutional laws or agencies, but with the Supreme Court acting like this, why bother with the political process?

And if a science can be morphed into morality by five men, why bother having a scientific debate?

posted by Eric on 04.04.07 at 09:07 AM





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Comments

If carbon dioxide is a polutant, does this mean Congress can tax breathing?

James   ·  April 4, 2007 11:16 AM

Governor Schwarzenegger sometimes goes to places around the state to talk about energy conservation and global warming in one of his 12 Hummers. I know he can afford 12 Hummers, but why would anyone want 12 of them?

Chocolatier   ·  April 4, 2007 10:29 PM

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