My initial take is that the case has implications for the EPA to requires CO2 emission standards for motor vehicles such as on-road cars, trucks, and motorcycles.  If anybody knows if there are farther-reaching implications for off-road, fugitive area sources, and stationary industrial sources please let us know.  Most of the links I've tried are subscription-only, like GreenWire.  A lawyer did send a cut 'n' paste of a GreenWire notice to me that specifically mentioned only cars and trucks, though.  /sammie

Onward through the fog

This decision is a blessing and omen at the same time.   A blessing because now the EPA will have to release reports and recommendations on CO2 emissions.   This will keep pressure on the Administration to show that it is in some way addressing the issue.  An omen because, as we've seen in the past, this Administration is absolutely awesome at ignoring empirical data, reproducing alternative versions of empirical data, and spinning contradictory misinformation to smoke out everybody in the room.   Endless heel-dragging and frivolous debating is probably going to be the order of the day.  

After the US Attourney purge, it is not likely you will see much honest and independent thought coming out of the EPA (not that you would expect any).  In addition, groups like the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers will unbdoubtedly have spell-checking rights to these "scientific" reports as the utility corporations did when Cheney created our energy policy.
It will be interesting to see if congress exerts any oversight this time around.

Fallinggoat, the ruling won't have much if any effect on the Bush administration, I suspect. Any EPA effort to regulate CO2 (yes, Sam, from cars and trucks only, at least as regards this case) would take a long time to formulate, and Bush will be gone by then. The main effect is to put another tool in the toolbox of the next president.

I've gotta run to a meeting now -- there's plenty more to discuss on this case, though.

www.grist.org

Well according to one article Roberts  argued not on the merits of regulating or even if global warming is occuring but simply that the states did not standing to bring the suit.

As far as I know, the case just dealt with the part of the Clean Air Act pertaining to motor vehicles, not the part pertaining to stationary sources. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

The Roberts dissent shows the kind of Court he wants to lead, a conservative activist court that seeks to undermine laws passed by a democratically-elected Congress. His convoluted arguments about "standing" were an attempt to prevent citizens from accessing the courts to uphold the law. He was not named by Bush by accident. Any notion that he has "no agenda" and simply wants to "call balls and strikes," as he claimed in his hearing, should be put to rest.

Bill Scher blogs for Common Sense at commonsense.ourfuture.org

C'mon guys, we can second guess this all day long but this is still huge.  In what the courts did and in terms of the popular view of the issue. Sure, the administration is going to stall, but that was a foregone conclusion.  It would seem to me this provides an awful lot of impetus for any future administration, Republican or Democrat, to get CO2 regulation on track.  Not to do so now will result in myriad lawsuits. If there's one thing those of us in federal agencies enjoy, it's dealing with lawsuits. It'll be a vexing proposition to find political appointees (or even career ones) willing to follow the business as usual path things are on now....not impossible, but more difficult.

I have not had a chance to read it all, especially the dissents.

This case comes in under a rather esoteric area of law known as "Administrative Agency Law". The EPA is one of those 4th branches of government known as an administrative agency.

AA's cannot do whatever they want. They cannot engage in arbitrary and capricious decision making. See 5 USC 706.

So one of the questions was, how much discretion does the EPA adminstrator have in making one of "his judgments"? The conservatives were arguing that it is near total discretion. The liberals said no, it had to more "reasonable" than that; and given that essentially all the scientists in the world are in agreement on GW, "reasonable" does not include an excuse like, I didn't regulate CO2 because I didn't feel like it; or I didn't regulate because I saw that commercial with the little girl blowing CO2 into a shedding dandelion and I was convinced that it's all good, all natural.

As I understand it, Scalia's point is that one of the legitimate "judgments" open to the EPA administrator is a purely political one: I won't regulate CO2 because Bush doesn't want me to.

Can you imagine the Pandora's Box of Hackery that would open up if that were taken seriously at all AAs?

See Pope's post for more on that point.

www.grist.org

These poor bushwack enablers gonna be crying now.  That's a shame.  Hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

pretty sweet, planet is still f*cked though.

William A. McDonough is my hero.