- Mélusine a écrit:
- l'année dernière je suis tombée sur le réchauffement climatique !!!!
J'ai retrouvé mon texte grâce à EDP !!!!
The New York Times - November 28, 2006
Global Warming Goes to Court
The Bush administration has been on a six-year campaign to expand its
powers, often beyond what the Constitution allows. So it is odd to hear
it claim that it lacks the power to slow global warming by limiting the
emission of harmful gases. But that is just what it will argue to the
Supreme Court tomorrow, in what may be the most important environmental
case in many years.
A group of 12 states, including New York and
Massachusetts, is suing the Environmental Protection Agency for failing
to properly do its job. These states, backed by environmental groups
and scientists, say that the Clean Air Act requires the E.P.A. to
impose limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by
new cars. These gases are a major contributor to the "greenhouse
effect" that is dangerously heating up the planet.
The Bush administration insists that the E.P.A. does not have the power to limit these gases. It argues that they are not "air pollutants" under the
Clean Air Act. Alternatively, it contends that the court should dismiss
the case because the states do not have "standing," since they cannot
show that they will be specifically harmed by the agency's failure to
regulate greenhouse gases.
A plain reading of the Clean Air Act
shows that the states are right. The act says that the E.P.A. "shall"
set standards for "any air pollutant" that in its judgment causes or
contributes to air pollution that "may reasonably be anticipated to
endanger public health or welfare." The word "welfare," the law says,
includes "climate" and "weather." The E.P.A. makes an array of specious
arguments about why the act does not mean what it expressly says. But
it has no right to refuse to do what Congress said it "shall" do.
Beneath the statutory and standing questions, this is a case about how
seriously the government takes global warming. The E.P.A.'s decision
was based in part on its poorly reasoned conclusion that there was too
much "scientific uncertainty" about global warming to worry about it.
The government's claim that the states lack standing also scoffs at
global warming, by failing to acknowledge that the states have a strong
interest in protecting their land and citizens against coastal flooding
and the other kinds of damage that are being projected.
In a friend-of-the-court brief, climate scientists from the NASA Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, Stanford University and other respected
institutions warn that "the scientific evidence of the risks, long time
lags and irreversibility of climate change argue persuasively for
prompt regulatory action." The Supreme Court can strike an important
blow in defense of the planet simply by ruling that the E.P.A. must
start following the law.
