Is Bush's Supreme Court Defiance Getting the Media's Attention?

Regular readers of Warming Law might have noticed that we like to occasionally critique various media outlets' handling of climate legal issues.

Sometimes the error is one of failure to look deeply and firmly enough at the issue-- take, for instance, the lack of follow-up questions in an interview with Stephen Johnson that accompanied week's otherwise-outstanding National Journal cover story on the "Vanishing EPA" (seriously, read the article, but click on the first link only if you want to ingest more talking points). Other times, it's complete confusion of the issue and failure to debunk patently false industry talking points, such as the zombie-like "patchwork quilt" mantra about state efforts to limit global warming pollution (h/t to Gristmill's David Roberts for first attaching the phrase "zombie-like" to that still-ongoing disinformation campaign).

With that in mind, we're always excited to see reporters cut to the heart of the issue and give their readers or viewers the simple, unvarnished facts without bias. ABC News' coverage of President Bush's climate speech today, and its relationship to the Supreme Court, is worth highlighting:

Currently the Bush administration is ignoring a Supreme Court order that the Environmental Protection Agency, a federal agency, determine whether carbon dioxide is harmful to human health and welfare. The court said if it is deemed to be harmful, the EPA must regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Not "environmental groups said" that the court made such a determination, but plain language indicating-- without qualification-- that Bush's desire to ignore the Supreme Court is the operative factor driving his administration's pretzel-like (and self-defeating) legal arguments and woefully inadequate alternative "plan." That wasn't too hard, was it?