Environmental Toxins: Supreme Court Rules Greenhouse Gases Must Be Considered Pollutants

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided that the Environmental Protection Agency must consider greenhouse gases to be pollutants. "Because greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act's capacious definition of 'air pollutant' we hold that EPA has the statutory authority to regulate the emission of such gases from new motor vehicles," the court said.

Government must deal with greenhouse gases: US Supreme Court

The state of Massachusetts led the initiative to determine whether the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide emissions. Judge John Paul Stevens said that he voted in favor of the EPA having some regulation over greenhouse gases because "the harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized." A spokesman for the Sierra Club, Josh Dorner, said that the vote was "a watershed moment in the fight against global warming."