Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf
Page Number: 26.0

20 

MASSACHUSETTS v. EPA 

Opinion of the Court 

as  a  landowner.  The  severity  of  that  injury  will  only 
increase  over  the  course  of  the  next  century:  If  sea  levels
continue  to  rise  as  predicted,  one  Massachusetts  official
believes that a significant fraction of coastal property will
be “either permanently lost through inundation or temporar-
ily  lost  through  periodic  storm  surge  and  flooding  events.” 
Id., ¶6, at 172.20  Remediation costs alone, petitioners allege,
could run well into the hundreds of millions of dollars.  Id., 
¶7, at 172; see also Kirshen Decl. ¶12, at 198.21 

Causation 

EPA  does  not  dispute  the  existence  of  a  causal  connec-
tion  between  man-made  greenhouse  gas  emissions  and 
global  warming.  At  a  minimum, therefore,  EPA’s  refusal 
to regulate such emissions “contributes” to Massachusetts’ 
injuries.

EPA  nevertheless  maintains  that  its  decision  not  to 
regulate  greenhouse  gas  emissions  from  new  motor  vehi-
cles  contributes  so  insignificantly  to  petitioners’  injuries 
that  the  agency  cannot  be  haled  into  federal  court  to  an-
swer for them.  For the same reason, EPA does not believe 

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20 See  also  id.,  at  179  (declaration  of  Christian  Jacqz)  (discussing
possible loss of roughly 14 acres of land per miles of coastline by 2100);
Kirshen Decl. ¶10, at 198 (alleging that “[w]hen such a rise in sea level
occurs, a 10-year flood will have the magnitude of the present 100-year
flood and a 100-year flood will have the magnitude of the present 500-
year flood”). 

21 In dissent, THE CHIEF JUSTICE dismisses petitioners’ submissions as
“conclusory,”  presumably  because  they  do  not  quantify  Massachusetts’ 
land loss with the exactitude he would prefer.  Post, at 8.  He therefore 
asserts  that  the  Commonwealth’s  injury  is  “conjectur[al].”  See  ibid. 
Yet the likelihood that Massachusetts’ coastline will recede has nothing 
to do with whether petitioners have determined the precise metes and 
bounds  of  their  soon-to-be-flooded  land.    Petitioners  maintain  that  the 
seas  are  rising  and  will  continue  to  rise, and  have  alleged  that  such a 
rise will lead to the loss of Massachusetts’ sovereign territory.  No one, 
save  perhaps  the  dissenters,  disputes  those  allegations.    Our  cases 
require nothing more.