Clean Air Act. ACES

Amid the trade-offs that went into the writing of the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) bill, someone took a hammer to a crown jewel of U.S. environmental law: the Clean Air Act.

The climate bill’s fate is in the Senate’s hands now, and the progressive grassroots movement MoveOn.org, other environmental groups and members of Congress are ramping up the pressure on senators to save the Clean Air Act from being shut down when it comes to CO2.

Buttressed by three rounds of amendments over the decades, the Clean Air Act has been effectively battling smog and other air pollution since 1970, providing the rulebook for the Environmental Protection Agency’s work.

Its New Source Performance Standards for Hazardous Pollutants have cut health-damaging emissions from power plants and industries, and its New Source Review has forced polluters to scrub acid-rain causing gases from smokestacks.

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the venerable law's authority could extend to CO2. This year, with a new administration in power, the EPA determined that greenhouse gases pose a danger to human health and welfare and is considering how to develop rules to use the Clean Air Act to regulate them.

But the House version of ACES would prevent EPA action on CO2, and that's got at least one senator up in arms.