On April 19th, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in American Electric Power, et al., v. Connecticut, et al., a case in which Connecticut and five other states sued five power generating companies for threatening “abrupt and catastrophic change in the earth’s climate” by contributing about 10% of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activity in the U.S. The states asked the courts to order the power companies to cap and reduce their CO2 emissions, but the Supreme Court must first decide if federal law even allows states and private citizens to sue a company for contributing to global warming as a “public nuisance.”
According to Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSBlog.com, although the justices didn’t want to simply dismiss the case, they had a hard time imagining how the court system could actually manage it. Several justices also indicated that the EPA was much better suited than the federal court system to resolve the issue.
