The moment we have been waiting for since 2004 (when the first climate change liability case was filed) finally arrived. The Supreme Court today rendered its opinion in American Electric Power Co., Inc.. v. Connecticut.  As many predicted following oral argument, the use of the federal common law of nuisance to limit carbon dioxide emissions simply is not a viable theory because it has been displaced by the Clean Air Act and the EPA's steps to implement the Act. For those who have not yet read the opinion, it is straightforward. Following the Supreme Court's 2007 decision in Massachusett...

Front page news in Baltimore this past week were two stories. The first notes record temperatures in Maryland in the first full week of June, 2011.  The second was a lead article this Sunday on the record year the Port of Baltimore is having moving coal from the mines of Appalachia to the coke ovens of Asia. It does not take a Shakespeare schooled in climate change to grasp the irony. First, the weather. Central Maryland suffered four 90-plus record highs in ten days, topping out at Baltimore-Washington International Airport at 99 degrees on June 8.  The summer (which hasn't even st...