EPA v. Tea Kettles
I starting reading this brief from Massachusetts v. EPA because I heard it won an award. But I didn’t get far. At the bottom of page 1, I got stuck on this assertion:
Physical or chemical matter that is emitted into the ambient air is an “air pollutant” under the Clean Air Act. 42 U.S.C. 7602(g).
The steam from a tea kettle is an air pollutant? Does the Clean Air Act really say that? I couldn’t believe it, so I read the act, and found that it defines an air pollutant like this:
The term “air pollutant” means any air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical, biological, radioactive (including source material, special nuclear material, and byproduct material) substance or matter which [sic] is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air.
By this definition, plants pollute the air when they emit oxygen! whales pollute the air when they exhale! cats pollute the air when they sneeze!
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In his dissent in Massachusetts v. EPA, Justice Scalia complained that — according to the majority’s interpretation of the law — “everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies as an ‘air pollutant.’” Given how the law is written, that’s the only reasonable interpretation there is.
Perhaps its time for politicians to spend less time complaining about courts interpreting the law. Perhaps its time for them to start demanding that legislators use due diligence in writing the law. If Congress did a reasonable job of writing the law, there’d be so much less need for the courts to speculate on what the law really means.
