James Milkey put the term "climate change on America's legal map," led a team of 50 mostly taxpayer paid attorneys in suing the US EPA to force it to regulate emissions from "new motors," allegedly because tailpipe-created CO2 caused simultaneous rise of global temperatures

9/30/10, "Mr. Mass v. EPA: An Interview with the Man Who Put Climate Change on America’s Legal Map," yaleclimatemediaforum.org, James Wihbey  

"And tucked away on the third floor of the John Adams Courthouse on Beacon Hill in Massachusetts, the man who set in motion this chain of events will be observing,' from the sidelines.

As the one-time top environmental lawyer in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, (James) Milkey formulated and first pushed the idea of suing EPA to contest its decision that it could not regulate greenhouse gases. With a team of some 50 other attorneys representing other states and environmental groups backing him, he argued and won the landmark Massachusetts v. EPA case before the Supreme Court. 

That 5-4 ruling in 2007 opened the door for EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding and its imminent regulation of carbon dioxide-emitting industries.

Now a sitting Associate Justice on the Massachusetts Appeals Court, Milkey still takes a keen interest in how the climate debate is playing out. The 53-year-old justice sat at his desk in his courthouse office for a recent interview, holding forth on everything from Clean Air Act legal intricacies to climate change media coverage and public opinion shifts. A large artist’s sketch of the Supreme Court oral arguments in the Mass v. EPA case loomed behind him on the wall."...

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The "Massachusetts v EPA," Supreme Court decision written by Justice Stevens cites the UN and UN IPCC as an authority on the idea that human CO2 and world temperatures rise together, and that the former causes the latter. Of interest, the April 2007 US Supreme Court 5-4 decision specifically only authorizes the EPA to regulate emissions from new motor vehicles and engines. Nothing was said about coal plants, power stations, industry, or anything else.

4/2/2007, "SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

MASSACHUSETTS, et al., PETITIONERS v ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY et al".

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