Thread: EPA Labels Greenhouse Gases as Harmful Pollutants

Originally Posted by Syme

This is fine for when some chemical company is dumping dioxins that get into the local water supply or whatever, but how could local communities bringing suit under tort law--even with the loopholes sewed up--possibly address the problem of global warming due to greenhouse gases? Which are the gases at issue in the OP.

EDIT: Actually, even if all the loopholes can be closed, I would still say that communities bringing suit under tort law is a woefully inadequate method of stopping companies from polluting. But that's a topic for another thread.

If the scientific argument is strong enough, which is evidently is, why is prosecution under current laws woefully inadequate? Wouldn't common law basically cater for any new regulation?

Yes, under existing law, the EPA is entitled (obligated, in fact) to identify harmful pollutants and impose regulations on the emission of those pollutants. Up until now, they have not identified greenhouse gases as harmful pollutants and thus haven't regulated the emission of greenhouse gases, but now they have identified greenhouse gases as such, which raises the prospect that they might regulate their emission. The question isn't whether the current regulatory framework is capable of being expanded to regulate GG emissions, it's whether that is the best way to approach the problem of GG emissions. There are people who think that it's not, and that the problem would be better approached with new legislation, for the (fairly understandable) reason that greenhouse gas emissions differ from "traditional" air pollution in several key respects, and perhaps should be differently regulated. Just because a system already exists to regulate one thing doesn't mean that the system is necessarily the ideal way to regulate new, related but different, things. So that's what the controversy is over, and that's why I started this thread; to discuss the controversy.

Would I be correct to assume that your stance is that new legislation is not needed, and that the current Clean Air Act regulatory regime should be used to regulate the emission of greenhouse gases along with the airborne pollutants that it already deals with?