Robert Meltz
Legislative Attorney
On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court rendered one of its most important environmental decisions of all time. In Massachusetts v. EPA, the Court held that greenhouse gases (GHGs), widely viewed as causing climate change, constitute "air pollutants" as that phrase is used in the Clean Air Act (CAA). As a result, said the Court, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had improperly denied a petition seeking CAA regulation of GHGs from new motor vehicles by saying the agency lacked authority over such emissions.
This report presents a chronology of major federal agency actions taken in the wake of Massachusetts v. EPA. Most of the listed actions trace directly or indirectly back to the decision: EPA's "endangerment finding" for GHGs from new motor vehicles, the agency's proposed standards for such vehicles, its interpretation of the phrase "subject to regulation" (the CAA trigger for requiring "best available control technology"), and the "tailoring rule" (limiting the stationary sources that initially will have to install best available control technology and obtain Title V permits). In addition, a few agency actions were included solely because of their relevance to climate change and their post-Massachusetts occurrence—for example, EPA's responses to California's request for a waiver of CAA preemption allowing that state to set its own limits for GHG emissions from new motor vehicles, and EPA's monitoring rule for GHG emissions.
More analytical treatment of the government actions in this report, and their broader context, may be found in
CRS Report RL32764, Climate Change Litigation: A Survey, by Robert Meltz;
CRS Report R40984, Legal Consequences of EPA's Endangerment Finding for New Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emissions, by Robert Meltz;
CRS Report RS22665, The Supreme Court's Climate Change Decision: Massachusetts v. EPA, by Robert Meltz; CRS Report R40585, Climate Change: Potential Regulation of Stationary Greenhouse Gas Sources Under the Clean Air Act, by Larry Parker and James E. McCarthy; and
CRS Report R40506, Cars and Climate: What Can EPA Do to Control Greenhouse Gases from Mobile Sources?, by James E. McCarthy.
Date of Report: March 5, 2010
Number of Pages: 8
Order Number: R41103
Price: $29.95
Document available electronically as a pdf file or in paper form.
To order, e-mail congress@pennyhill.com or call us at 301-253-0881.
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