In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that would seem to put an end to arguments about whether CO₂ is an air pollutant. In Massachusetts v. EPA, the Court found that CO₂ gases are, in fact, air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The Court went on to say that CO₂ can be regulated if the EPA Administrator finds that they pose a danger to the environment or human health.

Fast forward to late November 2008. The EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board issued a ruling that appeared to flow seamlessly from the Supreme Court’s decision. The Board knocked down a permit for a new coal-fired power plant in Utah. The permit included no provision that the plant control CO₂ emissions and the Board ruled that Region 8 had improperly refused to require those controls in its permit.

By the middle of December, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson shot off a thick memo to EPA’s regional directors in which he provided his interpretation of the law. According to Johnson, the relevant statutes did not require CO₂ limits to be included in PSD permits for major emitting facilities.

January 2009 has already reserved its place in history books and America’s collective memory. The inauguration is claiming center stage, of course, and the Senate’s interview of the incoming President’s nominee for Secretary of State has grabbed most of the left-over attention. Fine, but hearings by the US Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works are foreshadowing a change in the way environmental authority and responsibilities are interpreted by the EPA. The Committee’s hearings on the nominations of Lisa Jackson as EPA Administrator and Nancy Sutley as Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality showed the baseline of that change. “Science must be the backbone of what EPA does,” stated Jackson. That’s a good starting point.