In marking the one year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, in April 2007, then-Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee John Dingell argued that developing trends--without the adoption of rationalizing comprehensive federal climate legislation--would lead to a "glorious mess." He was referring to the potential combination facing businesses of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) piecemeal climate regulations, emerging state and regional programs, and the consequences of continuing litigation pursuing a wide variety of legal theories that could impose liabilities for greenhouse gas emissions. Are we able to find a path out of that mess?

Peterson et al. (the authors) set forth a wonderfully laudatory goal of leveraging and integrating state strategies, economic sectors, and policy instruments to create a robust regulatory platform for addressing climate change. Yet, several of the central weapons they seek to deploy, such as the Clean Air Act's national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) and state implementation planning process, clearly are not neat fits for this challenge. These approaches raise three kinds of concerns: can they practically be administered or accomplished; are they politically attainable; and in the end, would they provide sufficient tools to accomplish this task.