The political opponents of regulation addressing climate change claim that the Clean Air Act (CAA) is a “fossil” neither intended nor suitable for addressing the challenges of climate change. Legal and historical analysis suggests otherwise. Both the text of the Act, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the legislative history indicate a congressional intent to regulate emissions of pollutants that pose a risk of causing changes in worldwide climate.

On January 2, 2011, EPA’s much-anticipated prevention of significant deterioration and Title V Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule took effect, expanding the reach of the Clean Air Act and creating a phased-in approach to greenhouse gas regulation that initially targets the nation’s largest emitters but will gradually encompass additional sources. Numerous challenges threaten the rule’s long-term viability, including a regulatory alternative that could gain traction in the continued absence of a legislative response to the issue of climate change.

Throughout the country, divergent interests are collaborating about how they would like particular national forests to be managed. Some of these initiatives are seeking place-based legislation as a way to secure such agreements, while others use an assortment of different approaches and memoranda of understanding. What is most remarkable about these initiatives is the similarities they share, from a widespread frustration with the status quo to the search for more certainty in forest management.

The CWA, with multiple paths to its destination, is reinventing itself once more. Enacted in modern for  in 1972, the next quarter century saw EPA focused on the development of technology standards for industrial and municipal point sources. In the mid-1990s, prodded forward by a stream of citizen suits, the Agency started to address nonpoint sources of pollution through water quality standards and the TMDL program. This movement stalled from 2000-2009, and the current revival raises the question whether EPA, at last, can make nonpoint and ambient-based controls effective.

Good scientists have active minds and creative imaginations. These traits allow scientists to develop hypotheses and design experiments to test them with the hope of moving scientific inquiry and the state of knowledge ever further. While most laws do not implicate or emphasize science, the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) is among the few that does.