The Chamber of Commerce vs. Climate Science. By Kate Shepard, Mother Jones, March 1, 2010. "William Kovacs, the US Chamber of Commerce's vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs, last year famously called for a 'Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century' on climate change... The remark drew plenty of bad press, and Kovacs soon recanted his 'inappropriate' analogy. But it looks like the chamber is angling for that monkey trial after all, by way of a lawsuit it's filed against the Environmental Protection Agency that could be the first wave of a big-business assault on greenhouse gas regulations. At issue is a scientific finding issued by the EPA last year concluding that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health, due to the lower air quality, extreme weather events, and heat waves caused by rising temperatures. The chamber announced its intent to sue the EPA last month in an attempt to have the endangerment finding, as it's known, tossed out... Legally, the chamber and its allies don't have much of a case. In the 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases could be covered under the Clean Air Act if they are determined to threaten human health...
"So if the odds of this gambit succeeding are so low, then why is the chamber gearing up for a costly lost cause? The goal of the suit 'is political obfuscation,' argues Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. That is, the chamber's critics believe that the business lobby group hopes to once again muddy the public understanding of climate change by seeking a high-profile forum in which it can argue that the science isn't settled. 'This is part of a media and political strategy. It's not a legal strategy,' said David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel at Sierra Club, which has intervened in support of the EPA, along with several other environmental groups and 16 states, many of them litigants in the case that originally prompted the agency's action."
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