https://e360.yale.edu/digest/clean-air-act-climate-change Close / - - Search [ ]Search Yale Environment 360 Published at the Yale School of the Environment * Explore * Search * About E360 E360 Digest August 5, 2024 1970 Clean Air Act Was Intended to Cover Carbon Dioxide, Study Finds [pexels-ban] Pexels A new study finds evidence that Congress intended for the 1970 Clean Air Act to cover carbon dioxide emissions. The finding strengthens the legal case for regulating heat-trapping gases. Under former president Barack Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency put forward a regulation on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. But in 2022 the Supreme Court scrapped the standards, asserting that Congress had not empowered the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. A new review of historical records challenges the conclusion of the Supreme Court. Undertaken by researchers at Harvard and Duke, the research finds that the authors of the 1970 Clean Air Act understood that burning fossil fuels would warm the planet, and they considered carbon dioxide to be a pollutant. While lawmakers did not view carbon dioxide as an imminent threat, they did believe the greenhouse gas would eventually need to be regulated. At the time the law was crafted, there was already a growing awareness of climate change. Reports for presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon warned of planetary warming, and such information began to penetrate the public consciousness as Americans learned about the greenhouse effect by reading popular magazines, watching television, or in school. In a 1969 appearance on the Merv Griffin Show, beat poet Allen Ginsberg decried how "the current rate of air pollution brought about by the proliferation of automobiles" could cause "the rapid build-up of heat on the Earth." The new study explains how the staff of Senator Edmund Muskie, principal architect of the Clean Air Act, kept track of the public conversation on climate change. Muskie, a Democrat from Maine, warned at the time that unchecked pollution would "threaten irreversible atmospheric and climatic changes." The study, soon to be published in Ecology Law Quarterly, concludes that Congress "understood far more about the potential threat of anthropogenic climate change than either the [Supreme] Court or most commentators have recognized." ALSO ON YALE E360 How an Early Oil Industry Study Became Key in Climate Lawsuits * Facebook * Twitter * Email Related Articles * A prefabricated house delivered by barge to the Sahtu village of Tulita in 2022. Recent deliveries have been cancelled because of low water levels on the Mackenzie River. As Canadian River Shrivels, Northern Communities Call for a Highway By Ed Struzik * A woman comforts a relative suffering from heat stroke in Varanasi, India, May 30, 2024. INTERVIEW As World Warms, Global Heat Deaths Are Grossly Undercounted By Richard Schiffman * A barred owl. Grim Dilemma: Should We Kill One Owl Species to Save Another? By Jim Robbins More From E360 * Climate As Canadian River Shrivels, Northern Communities Call for a Highway * INTERVIEW As World Warms, Global Heat Deaths Are Grossly Undercounted * Biodiversity The 'Internet of Animals' Could Transform What We Know About Wildlife * Biodiversity Grim Dilemma: Should We Kill One Owl Species to Save Another? * INTERVIEW On Gulf Coast, an Activist Rallies Her Community Against Gas Exports * Climate With CO2 Levels Rising, World's Drylands Are Turning Green * WATER As World's Springs Vanish, Ripple Effects Alter Ecosystems * Climate The Race to Save Glacial Ice Records Before They Melt Away * INTERVIEW Turning Brownfields to Blooming Meadows, With the Help of Fungi * Solutions To Foil a Deadly Pest, Scientists Aim for a Beetle-Resistant Ash Tree * Climate Could the Global Boom in Greenhouses Help Cool the Planet? * Biodiversity In North Macedonia, an Ancient Lake Faces Modern Threats E360 * About E360 * Reprints * Contact * Support E360 * Privacy Policy * Submission Guidelines * Newsletter Published at the Yale School of the Environment