Big win for environmentalists

Let me tell you they're hating this one in Detroit, but I like it myself. In an important decision SCOTUS has effectively forced the EPA to do its job and protect the environment.

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the only way the agency could “avoid taking further action” now was “if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change” or provides a good explanation why it cannot or will not find out whether they do.

...Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, said that by providing nothing more than a “laundry list of reasons not to regulate,” the environmental agency had defied the Clean Air Act’s “clear statutory command.” He said a refusal to regulate could be based only on science and “reasoned justification,” adding that while the statute left the central determination to the “judgment” of the agency’s administrator, “the use of the word ‘judgment’ is not a roving license to ignore the statutory text.”

This thwarts the Bush administration's campaign to relegate the EPA's work to merely rubberstamping the mega-corporations' ongoing attempts to roll back hard fought for environmental regulations of past administrations in favor of "business friendliness," which you can read to mean higher profit margins for themselves.

SCOTUS did a good job on this one. Good for the environment. Good for the people. What's not to like?