national environmental policy act
Moving Environment Assessment Outside the Permit Process
Streamlining is good but shouldn’t become an excuse for just ignoring the environment.
I’m very sympathetic to arguments that we’re unable to build important infrastructure, whether housing or transmission, because we have too much red tape. There’s a real temptation, however, to throw out the environment a baby with the procedural bathwater. It’s hard not to suspect that sometimes that’s the point and permit reform is just an effort to avoid considering environmental harms. Be that as it may, it’s easy to embrace restrictions on environmental reviews without giving enough thought to what we may be losing – and how we might be able to get the best of both worlds. As Eric Biber has discussed in many of his posts, many proposed permit reforms are not well-designed to achieve their ends. A more fundamental problem is that we’re not always sure we’re addressing the right part of the problem.
CONTINUE READINGProblem solved?
Bipartisan proposal for permitting reform from Problem Solvers Caucus is a good first step, but has much more work to do
The permitting reform conversation continues in Congress – this time with a long set of proposals from the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, based on a range of conversations with different stakeholders and interest groups. There is much that is good in this set of proposals, but there are also proposals that require more thought, or …
Continue reading “Problem solved?”
CONTINUE READINGAnother Attempt to Measure NEPA’s Impact
This most recent report is better, but still has significant flaws
The Breakthrough Institute has produced another report on litigation under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), building on a report it prepared earlier, which I sharply criticized in this prior blog post. The updated report is a mixed bag: It doesn’t solve many of the methodological issues I identified in the earlier blogpost; it does …
Continue reading “Another Attempt to Measure NEPA’s Impact”
CONTINUE READINGShortchanging the Environment While Making NEPA More Chaotic
Trump replaced a coherent set of rules governing the executive branch with a welter of agency-specific regulations.
In one of Trump’s first executive orders, he eliminated a centralized system that Jimmy Carter initially set up to issue regulations governing environmental impact statements. Instead, he called on each agency to issue its own regulations, which seems to have caused the predictable amount of confusion. There seems to be little rhyme or reason in the variations
CONTINUE READINGWhat are the benefits of NEPA?
NEPA’s benefits are not necessarily easy to measure, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t important
This is the seventh in a series of posts on the reasons we might have environmental review. The first post is here. The second post is here. The third post is here. The fourth post is here. The fifth post is here. The sixth post is here. Which of the various reasons that we might …
Continue reading “What are the benefits of NEPA?”
CONTINUE READINGNEPA as participatory democracy
NEPA might provide an opportunity for community-level engagement that advances public participation
This is the sixth in a series of posts on the reasons we might have environmental review. The first post is here. The second post is here. The third post is here. The fourth post is here. The fifth post is here. The last major category of potential benefits from NEPA that I want to …
Continue reading “NEPA as participatory democracy”
CONTINUE READINGNEPA as a veto point
Environmental review can empower a wider range of actors to block or hinder government projects
This is the fifth in a series of posts on the reasons we might have environmental review. The first post is here. The second post is here. The third post is here. The fourth post is here. Judicial review to enforce NEPA ensures that agencies actually take environmental review requirements seriously, as opposed to producing …
Continue reading “NEPA as a veto point”
CONTINUE READINGCan NEPA change agency decisionmaking?
Environmental review can change agency incentives or culture
This is the fourth in a series of posts on the reasons we might have environmental review. The first post is here. The second post is here. The third post is here. Another pathway by which environmental review might change outcomes, even with no legally binding substantive components, is through changing internal agency decisionmaking. The …
Continue reading “Can NEPA change agency decisionmaking?”
CONTINUE READINGNEPA as a political tool
How NEPA can change environmental outcomes through political and public pressure
This is the third in a series of posts on the reasons we might have environmental review. The first post is here. The second post is here. A frequent critique of NEPA is that it is paperwork without purpose, and thus a waste of resources. How can a statute that has no substantive requirements, and …
Continue reading “NEPA as a political tool”
CONTINUE READINGNEPA as an environmental back-stop
NEPA can provide analytic coverage of environmental harms that are not covered under other statutes
This is the second in a series of posts on the reasons we might have environmental review. The first post is here. Why might we have an environmental review statute such as NEPA when we already have a range of other environmental protection statutes such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and …
Continue reading “NEPA as an environmental back-stop”
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
The Drain is a roundup of climate and environmental news from Legal Planet delivered to your Inbox once a week.
