Adding its voice to growing alarm over global warming, the Supreme Court on Monday ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to take a fresh look at the problem with an eye toward regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from cars.
The 5-4 ruling in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency is a sharp rebuke to the Bush administration, which argued that such gases are not air pollutants under the meaning of the Clean Air Act. The EPA also said that even if it did have the authority to regulate new cars’ emission of greenhouse gases, it would choose not to, because the problem is being addressed in other ways.
