Opinion ID: 547199
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: NRDC's Standing (MY 89)

Text: 12 According to the NRDC, the NHTSA's failure to prepare an EIS creates the risk that the agency will overlook the possibility that a CAFE standard below 27.5 mpg will lead to an increase in fossil fuel combustion that will, in turn, lead to a global increase in temperatures, causing a rise in sea level and a decrease in snow cover that would damage the shoreline, forests, and agriculture of California; and these local consequences of such a global warming would injure the NRDC's members who now use those features of California for recreational and economic purposes. According to the NRDC, this catastrophic and permanent change in the global climate would reduce yields from agriculture, increase urban smog, kill forests along climatic borders, and cause a two-foot rise in the sea level, thereby destroying 80% of United States coastal wetlands, forcing salt water into coastal drinking water supplies, and severely damaging shorelines and shoreline-related industries. 13 While the foregoing allegations make out injury indeed, the NRDC has failed to explain how that injury can be traced causally to the challenged decision and how the relief it seeks could redress the harm it foresees. Though the concepts of traceability and redressability may differ in some respects, they are alike in focusing on the question of causation. Haitian Refugee Center v. Gracey, 809 F.2d 794, 801 (D.C.Cir.1987) (opinion of Bork, J.); see Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 753 n. 19, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 3325 n. 19, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984) (To the extent that there is a difference, it is that the former examines the causal connection between the assertedly unlawful conduct and the alleged injury, whereas the latter examines the causal connection between the alleged injury and the judicial relief requested.). 14 First, as to traceability: the NRDC has failed to explain how the environmental nightmare it hypothesizes could, if it were to come about, fairly be traced to the MY 89 CAFE standard being set at 26.5 rather than 27.5 mpg, or to its cumulative impact in conjunction with previous decisions to set CAFE standards for earlier model years below 27.5 mpg. Although the NRDC alleges a causal connection generally between fossil fuel combustion and damage to the environment, it does not dispute the NHTSA's finding that the 1.0 mpg decrement at issue here would produce a maximum theoretical increase of less than one percent in greenhouse gases. In this circumstance, I think it clear that only the contribution that the NHTSA's decision makes to the projected catastrophe, and not the catastrophe as a whole, can fairly be traced to the challenged action. The NRDC makes no allegations, however, concerning the incremental harm wrought by the agency's decision. 15 Second, as to redressability: because the increase in greenhouse gases that the NHTSA's decision can be expected to generate is so small a contribution to the quantum necessary to produce the projected catastrophe, I cannot conclude, on the basis of the NRDC's allegations, that the injury asserted is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision on its petition. As we said in Dellums v. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Comm'n, 863 F.2d 968, 980 (D.C.Cir.1988), [W]hen numerous third parties and independent variables lead to an injury, the complainant has the burden of showing that but for the particular governmental action that he is challenging, the injury would abate. The NRDC fails to satisfy these twin causal requirements; absent any allegation that the marginal impact of NHTSA's decision to set the MY 89 standard at 26.5 mpg may create a serious environmental harm that, without an EIS, would be overlooked, see City of Davis v. Coleman, 521 F.2d at 671, that decision appears to be but an insignificant tributary to the causal stream leading to the overall harm that the petitioners have alleged. 16 Indeed, the NRDC failed to allege that a 1.0 mpg reduction would produce any marginal effect on the probability, the severity, or the imminence of global warming. Without any allegation of an identifiable effect of this kind, and without any indication that the causal relationship between global warming and the volume of greenhouse gases is continuous, we have no basis for believing that setting the standard at 26.5 mpg rather than 27.5 mpg will have any impact at all. I, therefore, would hold that the NRDC lacks standing to seek review, and I dissent from the court's decision to the contrary. 17 Chief Judge Wald would apparently find that the causal requirements of traceability and redressibility are satisfied by allegations, not about the consequences of the decision under review, but about the seriousness of the global warming phenomenon in general, and about the need for overall reductions in carbon dioxide achieved not necessarily via the CAFE program, but on a wide variety of fronts. Wald op. at 496. She would thus dispense with the requirement that a petitioner allege at least some threshold reason for believing that a serious environmental harm might be overlooked because an EIS was not done. Under her approach, it seems that any party would have standing to challenge any agency decision that, in its view, does not do enough to address the alleged problem of global warming. Under Judge Ruth B. Ginsburg's approach, a petitioner's failure to allege that the agency action will produce any identifiable marginal impact would not bar its standing to litigate the matter in federal court. It is not clear to me whether her position is materially different from that of Chief Judge Wald. It is clear, though, that if either of my colleagues' approaches were to prevail, the standing requirement would, as a practical matter, have been eliminated for anyone with the wit to shout global warming in a crowded courthouse. Cf. Saltany v. Regan, 886 F.2d 438, 440 (D.C.Cir.1989) (We do not conceive it a proper function of a federal court to serve as a forum for 'protests,' to the detriment of parties with serious disputes waiting to be heard.).