OneWorld.net (U.S.)

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 29 (OneWorld) - The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a landmark environmental case filed by 12 states, three cities, and more than a dozen health and environmental groups.

At issue is whether the Clean Air Act requires the George W. Bush administration to try to regulate carbon dioxide in an effort to stop global warming.

"Global warming and climate change are key environmental problems of our times," said Howard Fox, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice, which is representing the Sierra Club in the case officially known as Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency.

"The Clean Air Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to protect all of us from dangers to the climate," he told OneWorld. "The climate is warming, there's flooding of land and worse air pollution and worse storms, but we're not taking the action necessary to combat that."

The White House maintains that the Clean Air Act does not require it to regulate carbon dioxide, the main chemical that causes global warming. While the chemical is emitted as pollution from cars, factories, and other sources, it also occurs naturally in the atmosphere. When humans and animals breathe in oxygen, they breathe out carbon dioxide.

The Bush administration has found allies in the American auto industry, which is being represented by former independent counsel Kenneth Starr. In briefs filed with the court, Starr wrote, the Clean Air Act was "intended as a measure to 'clean' the air of pollutants, not to alter the overall composition of the Earth's atmosphere."

But the states and environmentalists counter that the Clean Air Act's language is broad, asking the executive to regulate anything that affects "weather" and "climate."

Stiff regulations to solve the problem of global climate change have broad based support, according to a new poll sponsored by the Earth Day Network (EDN), which planned the first Earth Day three decades ago.

The poll, taken just before Democrats swept both Houses of Congress this month, shows that Americans are worried about global warming.

Some 58 percent said global warming will have a "great to extreme" impact on their children's future and two out of three believe it will adversely impact the U.S. economy over the next 10 years.

The poll of 1020 adults also found a majority of Americans (61 percent) believe it is "very to extremely" important for their government leaders to require higher fuel efficiency standards in automobiles, and nearly half say it is that important for oil companies to be taxed for their contributions to global warming.

The EDN's Adam Ratliff told OneWorld the results are especially meaningful since neither party talked much about the environment this election season. "This issue is on people's minds," he said. "Regardless of party it seems like politicians in general want to sweep these issues under the rug. But this is an issue that people want addressed."

In the poll, respondents were asked to rank in order of preference six solutions being considered by government leaders to solve global warming. The most popular solution was higher fuel efficiency standards, chosen by 61 percent of respondents, (71 percent of Democrats, 65 percent of Independents, and 49 percent of Republicans), followed by higher energy efficiency requirements for electronics and appliances and tax breaks for industries that invest in renewable energy, both of which were chosen by 55 percent of respondents.

"Americans are worried about their kids, the economy, and even national security because it's linked to our dependence on foreign oil," EDN President Kathleen Rogers said in a statement.

"Our poll confirms that climate change is growing as a major concern for the average American and those who have made personal changes to address the problem are voting for candidates who actively address global warming, but it also shows that we have some more educating to do at every level--all the way up to Capitol Hill."