Massachussetts v. EPA (environmental)

Massachusetts petitioned the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act which states that "any air pollutant" that can "reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare" must be regulated. The EPA denied this petition, saying that even if they were authorized to regulate carbon dioxide, they didn't have to until further research was done. Massachusetts appealed this denial to the Court Of Appeals, which sided with the EPA. They appealed then to The Supreme Court, which reversed the decision by a 5-4 vote with Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer for Mass., and Stevens wrote the decision, stating that Massachussetts had a "stake in protecting its quasi-sovereign interests" and therefore had a right to sue the EPA for potentially failing to protect it's territory from poison. Roberts dissented, saying that carbon dioxide's damaging qualities were not proven, and Scalia dissented saying that the clean air act was intended to combat "conventional lower-atmosphere pollutants," not global climate change.