States turn up heat.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The Bush administration has shown time and again that it's willing to use any excuse, now matter how flimsy or contrived, to avoid taking the sensible steps necessary to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

The administration questioned the scientific consensus on global warming long after it was difficult to do so with a straight face. Even after a White House-commissioned report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded as early as 2001: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise."

Following the 2000 election, President Bush ruled out signing the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that its limits would damage the U.S. economy. Now, as the world considers Kyoto's successor, the administration still clings to that spurious argument despite abundant evidence to the contrary.

The evidence includes a recent British government report warning that the cost of doing nothing about global warming will dwarf the cost of acting now to curtail it.

Then there's the administration's long-standing claim that it lacks the power to regulate carbon dioxide and other gases as air pollutants that affect both climate change and public health.

While it's refreshing to hear the Bush administration suggest there may be some powers that are beyond the executive branch's grasp, the argument that it cannot legally assume regulatory authority over greenhouse emissions is an illusion of David Copperfield dimensions.

The U.S. Supreme Court today will hear oral arguments in a lawsuit brought by Oregon and 11 other states seeking to require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to impose limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by new cars.

The administration argues that the federal Clean Air Act gives it no power to impose such limits. Yet the law, written in 1963 long before global warming became an international crisis, states that the EPA "shall" regulate any air pollutants that endanger public health and welfare. Moreover, it specifically lists "climate" and "weather" under the category of welfare.

The administration has gone to extraordinary lengths insisting that the law doesn't say what it clearly does. It even tries to make the case that states lack legal standing to seek review by the Supreme Court. As if the devastating impacts of global warming, ranging from coastal flooding to droughts to wildfires, don't give states such as Oregon legitimate grounds to ask the court to force the EPA to obey the law and to regulate the emissions that contribute to climate change.

A neutral reading of the law would lead the Supreme Court to require the Bush administration to fulfill its legal - and moral - responsibility to control greenhouse gas emissions. Oregonians should take pride that their state is playing a pivotal role in what may prove to be the most significant environmental case ever to come before the court.