Last year EPA determined that greenhouse gases (GHGs), like carbon dioxide and methane, pose a danger to the environment through their contribution to global warming. Whether warming is occurring as a result of human activity is being fought out in the blogosphere, but the real resolution will probably occur in the courts. Some states and businesses have challenged the endangerment finding, and other states and organizations are lining up on the other side. Here's a report from the New York Times about the battle that is shaping up.
Some lawsuits have been brought by plaintiffs alleging damage from global warming (Hurricane Katrina victims, Alaskan Inuits) and naming specific energy companies as defendants. These have been hailed by environmentalists as a way to force reductions in GHGs, but they may turn out to be trouble for those seeking to prove the harmful effects of GHGs. The impetus for regulating GHGs comes from questionable computer models about what will happen to the climate in the future; the lawsuits could be the first place where those models are shown to be unreliable and wrong.
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