Trump Helps the Environment by Enraging Environmentalists. His plan to reform NEPA would speed replacement of old, dirty projects with cleaner new ones.

Wall Street Journal ^ | July 30, 2020 | Richard Epstein

[karpov]

The Trump administration recently published the first comprehensive revision of federal regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970. Environmental groups predictably denounced the initiative. Among its many detractors, the Wilderness Society insists that these regulations will “essentially gut” NEPA by putting “polluters in charge of environment protection.” This objection wholly overlooks NEPA’s deeply dysfunctional features.

From its inception in 1970, NEPA had two basic objectives: first, to require all new projects to receive a thorough and transparent vetting of potential environmental risks; second, to expand democratic participation in the review process via public hearings.

Five decades later, it is clear that NEPA has achieved neither. The most obvious sign of institutional distress is the long time—4.5 years on average—to complete the elaborate environmental impact statement before work can commence. Today’s NEPA behemoth is far from its 1970 origins, which is why the Trump administration’s update is overdue.

Environmentalist critics work on the flawed assumption that the longer the review period, the greater the environmental protection. But that’s untrue for the large majority of important projects. As I detail in a report for ConservAmerica, these new projects typically replace older, more dangerous projects and use superior technologies unavailable generations ago. When NEPA review delays a state-of-the-art pipeline, for instance, that requires greater shipment of fossil fuels by rail and truck, which is far more likely to cause major spills with extensive collateral damage.

As drafted, NEPA requires the government agency in charge of a review to consider “every significant aspect of environmental impact,” a clear impossibility for complex multibillion-dollar projects. Typically the truncation of that open-ended inquiry leads officials to become preoccupied with small defects and overlook the major improvements in both consumer welfare and environmental safety that new roads, bridges, airports and other projects promise.

[karpov]

Full article at https://apkmetro.com/trump-helps-the-environment-by-enraging-environmentalists/ .

[freedumb2003]

In the end these reports just keep consultancies in business (like SOX). The contents are irrelevant as no human nor team could read nor interpret them.