Hudson graduate among scientists participating in Supreme Court case on carbon dioxide emissions

Pamela Matson, a 1971 graduate of Hudson High School and current Dean of Earth Sciences at Stanford University, took part in an amicus curiae brief supporting the plaintiff in historic U.S. Supreme Court decision on carbon dioxide emissions and climate change.

In the case, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, et al. v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, several states sued the EPA for failure to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles as required by the Clean Air Act.

On April 3, the US Supreme Court decided in favor of Massachusetts, et al.

"This ruling is a victory for climate science," said UA ecologist Scott Saleska, the scientist who organized the scientists' collaboration on the brief. "EPA ignored what is perhaps the most important finding in climate science in the last decade, which is that the rise of global temperature and the anthropogenic increase in atmospheric CO2 are causally linked.

"The opening paragraph of the Court majority opinion cited that specific scientific finding."

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