In one of its most important environmental decisions in years, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases in automobile emissions. The court further ruled that the agency could not sidestep its authority to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change unless it could provide a scientific basis for its refusal.

The 5-to-4 decision was a strong rebuke to the Bush administration, which has maintained that it does not have the right to regulate carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act, and that even if it did, it would not use the authority. The ruling does not force the environmental agency to regulate auto emissions, but it would almost certainly face further legal action if it failed to do so.

— link

The city’s Board of Supervisors approved groundbreaking legislation Tuesday to outlaw plastic checkout bags at large supermarkets in about six months and large chain pharmacies in about a year.

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Fifty years ago, plastic bags — starting first with the sandwich bag — were seen in the United States as a more sanitary and environmentally friendly alternative to the deforesting paper bag. Now an estimated 180 million plastic bags are distributed to shoppers each year in San Francisco. Made of filmy plastic, they are hard to recycle and easily blow into trees and waterways, where they are blamed for killing marine life. They also occupy much-needed landfill space.

–Read the whole article. via WorldChanging

Climate models indicate region will be as dry as Dust Bowl for decades.

A 117-page document obtained by Salon.com highlights a “secretive plan” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to “gut” the Endangered Species Act.

The law, which is “credited with saving the American Bald Eagle from extinction,” would be changed to “limit the number of species that can be protected,” curtail preserved acres of wildlife habitat, and “dilute legal barriers that protect habitat from sprawl, logging or mining.”

– ThinkProgress