A Day of Action.

Today I received an urgent petition from enviro-law nonprofit EarthJustice. No, wait, today I found out I’d received it. It had been thrown underneath a pile for several days, deemed ‘spam’ by my mother.

That’s ok. I quickly explained to her why it wasn’t. There’s a little something called the Clean Air Act which found its way to the EPA in 2003, which apparently did NOT define carbon dioxide as a pollutant. The EPA did its best to assure the public that it therefore didn’t have authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

That went great.

Actually, it allowed 12 states and 13 enviro groups in 2007 to sue the agency and allow it to claim responsibility, with the Supreme Court voting 5-4. The Court encouraged the EPA to act in accordance with the act’s mandate to ‘protect the public from air pollution’ (“Supreme Court Ruling Adds Twist to Clean Air Debate”, 1).

Fun stuff. Great to know the EPA’s on our side, isn’t it? Public health? What’s that?

I don’t know, but that piece of paper asking me to petition them sure looks like spam.

Sources

• “Supreme Court Ruling Adds Twist to Clean Air Debate”. Earthworks: Making Progress and Facing Problems. May 2008: 4.