By Sharon Buccino, Natural Resources Defense Council What They Do and Ways to Respond Background In passing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) over 50 years ago, Congress made it the “continuing responsibility of the Federal government to . . . fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as trustee of the environment for succeeding generations.” […]
By Sharon Buccino, Natural Resources Defense Council What They Do and Ways to Respond Background In passing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) over 50 years ago, Congress made it the “continuing responsibility of the Federal government to . . . fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as trustee of the environment for succeeding generations.” […]
By Christopher Williams, American Rivers When Trump administration Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former oil and gas industry lobbyist, celebrates a proposed regulation as “really, really big…affect[ing] virtually every single decision by the federal government that affects the environment,” folks who care about clean air and water had better brace for some bad news. The […]
By David Rosen and Matt Kent, Public Citizen With President Donald Trump’s war on regulation kicking into high gear, corrupt administration officials, anti-regulatory ideologues and industry lobbyists are eager to hide what they’re up to and how it will harm the public. Often, the way the right disguises and evades responsibility for attacks on workers, […]
By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform On Thursday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Environment Subcommittee will hold a hearing to examine the harm to children posed by the Trump administration’s attack on one of the most wildly successful clean air protections in American history: the Obama-era Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS). The rule, adopted in […]
By Better Markets Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) sounds good and neutral. After all, who could oppose only doing something when the benefits outweigh the costs? The fatal flaws in a cost-benefit framework only appear when the assumptions underlying the analysis are identified: that all the costs and benefits are known, quantifiable and weighted neutrally by an […]
By Larissa Liebmann, Waterkeeper Alliance Since 1970 the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has been a vital tool for the public to ensure that decisions made by federal agencies that impact the environment are made in a transparent, well-informed manner. NEPA requires agencies to take a “hard look” at the potential impacts of their decisions, […]
By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform When the Trump administration released its recent proposal to gut the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), it trumpeted the action as a long-overdue step to “modernize” the law’s implementation by “simplifying” and “clarifying” its procedural and analytical requirements for federal agencies. If these words sound familiar, that’s because they’re the disingenuous claptrap […]
By Luke Tonachel, Natural Resources Defense Council When the Trump administration proposed its ridiculous rollback of clean car standards in 2018, it pretended that the increased costs for drivers at the pump, the loss of jobs and devastating pollution impacts were worth it because of some safety benefits. It was clear from day one that […]
By Dave Cooke, Union of Concerned Scientists A little over a year ago, EPA and NHTSA proposed rolling back fuel economy and vehicle emissions standards based on deeply flawed analysis. Earlier this month, EPA and NHTSA finally got around to “fixing” the plethora of errors and have submitted the updated rule over to the Office of Management and […]
By Christy Goldfuss, Claire Moser and Sally Hardin, Center for American Progress Last week, the Trump administration released a draft of its proposed changes to the regulations that implement the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—the most important law that requires the federal government to consider the environmental impacts of its decisions and that gives the public a voice in federal decision-making. […]
Sharon Buccino, Natural Resources Defense Council A half a century ago, members of Congress from both parties and all corners of our nation came together to pass a landmark law that gave citizens a guaranteed say in the projects that will define our nation. More than an environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, […]