CNN, Washington Post, LA Times, NYTimes. No matter where you went looking for information on the Global Warming hearings at the Supreme Court that started yesterday, it was if it was second-rate news… the news that nobody wants to read about. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising, considering that among the Justices who are hearing the case, you could hear Antonin Scalia stating the obvious:

“Troposphere, whatever. I told you before I’m not a scientist… That’s why I don’t want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.”

Or this:

“You have to show the harm is imminent… I mean, when is the cataclysm?”

One last pearl, this time by Chief Justice Roberts:

Roberts questioned whether regulating American vehicles would be able to remedy any harm by reducing greenhouse gases worldwide. That “assumes there isn’t going to be a greater contribution of greenhouse gases from economic development in China and other places that’s going to displace whatever marginal benefit you get here,” he said.

So here’s the deal, more or less, as framed by Scalia and Roberts. Since there’s a chance that someone else (in this case, the Chinese) may screw things up with the environment, why should Americans bother about doing the right thing? Plus, even if there was some damage being done that we could do something about, what’s the rush, if it’s so far in the future… And ultimately, I don’t want to talk about it, because the whole topic of Global Warming is flat out boring to me and I ain’t a scientist.

But these people are losing sight of the big picture. This is not just “some” ruling they are supposed to make, or your average lawsuit by a bunch of blue “treehugging” states that should be dismissed as frivolous or a waste of time. Even if they are not scientists, the Supreme Court should consider scientific evidence and not get hung up on semantics discussions like they seem to be at this point.

Greenhouse emissions are serious business and if they weren’t, why would would G.W. Bush have pledged to regulate them back in 2000 when he was campaigning? (though he to sadly reversed his position on this once in power).

This is the world that is at stake and to see such delicate things in the hands of people that in spite of being smart, seem to prefer to look the other way and ignore an imminent problem (hoping that this is the case and not one of conflicting interests…) just breaks my heart.

I wonder if any of them have seen An Inconvenient Truth or if they just discarded it altogether because it was based on an environmental pursuit by Al Gore, a former Democratic VP and Presidential candidate…