NEPA
Whose Interests Count? And How Much?
Whether to consider harms to foreign countries and future generations is controversial. So is how much weight to give harm to the poor.
Should regulators take into account harm to people in other countries? What about harm to future generations? Should we give special attention when the disadvantaged are harmed? These questions are central to climate policy and some other important environmental issues. I’ll use cost-benefit analysis as a framework for discussing these issues. You probably don’t need …
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CONTINUE READINGAn Abundance Research Agenda
If we need to build lots of things fast to address climate and housing crises, how will we do that?
There’s been a lot of buzz about this column by Ezra Klein in the New York Times. Klein’s basic argument: We need to do a lot of infrastructure and other development projects to make the world a better place. For example, we’ll need to build power lines and renewable projects to address climate change. But …
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CONTINUE READINGBiden Undoes NEPA Rollback
Trump tried to keep climate change out of environmental impact statements. Biden was right to scotch that effort.
Yesterday, the White House undid an effort by the Trump Administration to undermine the use of environmental impact statements. The pre-Trump rules had been in effect since 1978. Restoring the 1978 version was the right thing to do. The Trump’s rules arbitrarily limited the scope of the environmental effects that EPA can consider. Their goal …
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CONTINUE READINGPipelines, Emissions and FERC
From now on, carbon emissions from new pipelines will be one of FERC’s key concerns.
On Friday there were two seismic shocks in the world of gas pipeline regulation. FERC has spent years resisting pressure to change the way it licenses new gas pipelines. A whole point of a natural gas pipeline is to deliver the gas to users who will burn it, thereby releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. FERC …
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CONTINUE READINGDebating Environmental Racism in the Ninth Circuit
A recent case occasioned a sharp exchange about accusation of environmental racism.
Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice v. FAA is a Ninth Circuit opinion decided before the Thanksgiving break. It involved to a legal challenge to the FAA’s refusal to prepare a full-scale environmental impact statement before approving a major Amazon distribution center at the San Bernardino airport. I probably wouldn’t have read the decision …
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CONTINUE READINGU.C. Davis School of Law Hosts “CEQA at 50” Conference on April 16th
Virtual Event Commemorates Past, Predicts Future of the California Environmental Quality Act
Now a half-century old, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) remains California’s most important, cross-cutting and controversial environmental law. Originally patterned on the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act, CEQA has over the decades become a more powerful law than its federal counterpart. And while numerous other states have adopted their own “little NEPA” statutes, CEQA …
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CONTINUE READINGThe U.S. Government Is Researching Solar Geoengineering. Now What?
Officials should use the tools on hand to get governance right.
In December, Congress renewed funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to investigate stratospheric aerosols as a potential method for “solar climate interventions,” expanding a research program established a year earlier. These actions have been widely interpreted as the first-ever federal research project into solar geoengineering—proposals to slightly “dim the sun” to limit …
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CONTINUE READINGDownstream Emissions
A new court ruling could doom the Trump Administration’s ANWR plan.
A Ninth Circuit ruling yesterday overturned approval of offshore drilling in the Arctic. The ruling may directly impact the Trump Administration’s plans for oil leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). By requiring agencies to consider emissions when fossil fuels are ultimately burned, the Court of Appeal’s decision may also change the way that …
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CONTINUE READINGSome of the Things Federal Agencies Can Do to Address Climate Change
Current federal law provides many ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even without a friendly senate
As the likelihood grows that the United States will have a new president who will preside over a divided government, and various policy think tanks line up to offer suggestions for effective action on various important issues, it seems like the right time to shine a light once again on a series of reports issued …
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CONTINUE READINGEnforcing NEPA’s Forgotten Mandate
The courts have failed to enforce a core requirement of NEPA. That leaves the White House.
The Democrats have adopted an ambitious platform for environmental protection, full of innovative legislative initiatives. Here’s another idea Biden and Harris should consider, making use of the oldest of the modern environmental statutes. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is best known for requiring environmental impact statements. While they have enforced that requirement, the courts …
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