JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Milkey … To be sure, carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and it can be an air pollutant. If we fill this room with carbon dioxide, it could be an air pollutant that endangers health. But I always thought an air pollutant was something different from a stratospheric pollutant, and your claim here is not that the pollution of what we normally call "air" is endangering health. That isn't, that isn't — your assertion is that after the pollutant leaves the air and goes up into the stratosphere it is contributing to global warming.
MR. MILKEY: Respectfully, Your Honor, it is not the stratosphere. It's the troposphere.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I'm not a scientist.
(Laughter.)
JUSTICE SCALIA: That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.
– Excerpt from a transcript of oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court, Nov. 29, 2006, in the case of Massachusetts et al vs. Environmental Protection Agency et al. Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General James R. Milkey, representing his own state and 11 others, was challenging the EPA's decision not to regulate greenhouse-gas emission in new motor vehicles.
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2006.
