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Does the Clean Air Act give the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate

carbon dioxide as a pollutant? The Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments beginning

in October in a case that will redefine environmental regulation in the United States.

Here's Cato Senior Fellow and Environmental Expert Pat Michaels.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Massachusetts versus the EPA to determine

whether carbon dioxide gas should be classified and regulated as a pollutant,

is it?

Well, somebody's going to have to prove that the net effect of increasing carbon dioxide is negative.

Negative on society, negative on health and welfare, etc.

That is going to be a very, very difficult proof indeed.

The plaintiff argues that the Clean Air Act gives the government authority to regulate carbon dioxide because it causes climate change.

Are you saying that it doesn't?

Now there's no doubt the planet's warmer than it was, but you have to demonstrate that that climate

change in fact induces a net negative or doesn't carry other things along with it that are more positive.

I'm sure that an amicus brief that will come from somebody by the name of Epstein

will argue that global warming increases the range of malaria

and therefore kills 150,000 excess people per year.

And then somebody else is going to argue that, well, yes, maybe that's true,

but in fact the number of lives that have been saved, meaning extended for a long time, by the benefits of a fossil fuel-powered society dramatically

...