Supreme Court Case Highlights EPA Role in Carbon Pollution Protection

WASHINGTON (June 20, 2011) -- A Supreme Court decision today confirmed the Environmental Protection Agency’s vital role in protecting against dangerous carbon pollution.

David Doniger, policy director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, made the following statement:

"Today's ruling reaffirms the Environmental Protection Agency's duty under the nation’s 40-year-old Clean Air Act to safeguard public health and welfare from dangerous carbon pollution.  Now the EPA must act without delay.”

"Power plants are the nation’s biggest polluters, pumping more than two billion tons of carbon dioxide pollution into the air each year.  Their pollution is driving dangerous heat waves and smog, stronger storms, floods, and droughts, and many other threats to our health and safety and our homes and communities."

Doniger, an NRDC attorney who helped represent three land conservation trusts that joined the states in bringing this case, provides more background information in his blog: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ddoniger/supreme_court_climate_decision.html.