Thomas Jorling Says Clean Air Act Was Meant to Cover Greenhouse Gases

Dispute Over Clean Air Act Scope

Thomas Jorling, a lawyer who helped write the 1970 Clean Air Act, is disputing the Trump administration’s claim that the law does not apply to planet-warming greenhouse gases.

The administration argued this year that the Clean Air Act does not authorize the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases. In February, the Environmental Protection Agency revoked the 2009 “endangerment finding,” the agency’s scientific conclusion that greenhouse gases endanger human health.

That move effectively ended the federal government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles and other sources, including power plants. Legal challenges from Democrat-led states and environmental groups are already underway, and the issue is expected to reach the Supreme Court.

Jorling’s View of the Law

Jorling said the law’s authors understood that scientists would continue identifying new pollutants over time, even though climate change was not as widely recognized in 1970 as it is today. He said the legislation was written to be flexible enough to cover those newly understood threats.

Regulating greenhouse gas emissions, he said, is “perfectly consistent with the Clean Air Act.”

Speaking from his home in Williamstown, Mass., where he is retired at age 85, Jorling recalled that lawmakers sought to future-proof the law. Their aim, he said, was to avoid having to return to Congress each time a new pollutant was discovered and require a new statute.

Break With Today’s Republican Party

Jorling’s position places him sharply at odds with the modern Republican Party. But when the Clean Air Act was drafted, he was advising Republican senators who were cosponsoring the bill, reflecting a kind of bipartisan cooperation that has largely faded.

His account centers on legislative intent: that the law was designed to adapt as scientific understanding of air pollution evolved. That interpretation now stands at the center of a major legal and political fight over the federal government’s power to address climate pollution under one of the nation’s foundational environmental laws.