This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, December 18th.

I'm Anastasia Glova.

The ongoing case, Massachusetts v. EPA, still pending before the Supreme Court, was filed by 12 states

and several cities of the United States who wanted to force the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

The central question here is whether the EPA even has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide

and other air pollutants associated with climate change.

Senior fellow Pat Michaels will discuss the oral arguments heard on November 29th.

Let's recap what's at stake in Massachusetts V EPA.

Mass V EPA was brought to the court with the claim from the attorney general of Massachusetts

and other attorneys generals from other states that existing law required the

environmental protection agency to limit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of

the main global warming gas claiming that it was a pollutant and would cause net harm.

What are the real risks of greenhouse gases to coastlines then?

Well, in the oral arguments in Mass V. EPA, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts claim that it would lose a lot of

shoreline because of warming and the regulation that was brought before them was called into

question by Justice Scalia when he said well how much coastline

would the regulation that was being proposed save and the answer was the real answer is that it wouldn't save any.

It would be totally unmeasurable.

That has come to the attention of the court, given some of the amicus curia briefs that were submitted.

Would some reduction of greenhouse gas have at least a

measurable impact on sea level rise? Well if every nation of the world did what

they said they were going to do under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the amount of warming that would be saved is

...