Feller Weighs in on Global Warming

01/05/2007

Feller Weighs in on Global Warming
Joe Feller, professor of law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law and faculty fellow at the Center for the Study of Law, Science, & Technology, recently authored an opinion piece for the Arizona Daily Star, headlined "Court must conclude that global warming gases are a real danger."
 
The opinion piece also ran in at least nine other papers in California, Florida, Kansas, Minnesota, Ohio, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, including the San Diego Union-Tribune, Monterey County Sunday Herald, Miami Herald, Kansas City Sunday Star, the Duluth News-Tribune, Columbus Dispatch, Portsmouth (NH) Sunday Herald, and the Centre Sunday Times (State College, Pa.)
 
"President Bush has often criticized 'activist judges' for allegedly shaping the law to fit their own policy preferences instead of enforcing it as written," Feller writes. "Now, Bush's own appointees to the Supreme Court have an opportunity to show that they will enforce a law that Congress enacted more than 30 years ago, rather than bending that law out of shape to avoid a result that they would rather not reach.
 
"The law involved is the Clean Air Act, enacted in 1970 and still very relevant today. Although the Clean Air Act is long and complicated, at least one of its requirements is clear and simple. It requires the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to issue standards limiting automobile emissions of any air pollutant 'which in his judgment causes, or contributes to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.' "
 
Read the entire article here. 
 
Professor Feller works on environmental and natural resource issues, with emphasis on public land management and water law. His writings on environmental and natural resources law have appeared in numerous legal and scientific journals, and he was an author of the American Bar Association's NEPA Litigation Handbook.
 
Professor Feller has been a leading advocate for reform of livestock grazing on public lands in the western United States, and has represented environmental interests in litigation before administrative boards, federal district courts and courts of appeal, and the United States Supreme Court. Before undertaking the study of law, Professor Feller obtained a doctorate degree in physics and he was an Assistant Professor of Physics at Columbia University.
 
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