The Council on Environmental Policy (CEQ) has issued a proposal to update and “modernize and clarify” the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA is a landmark regulation signed into law by President Nixon in 1970. The CEQ proposal states it wants to “facilitate more efficient, effective, and timely NEPA reviews by Federal agencies” as the prepare environmental impact statements for proposals on federal lands.
According to the Columbia Law Blog, this proposal would undermine the environmental policy that NEPA was supposed to establish. It looks like this update will expedite fossil fuel leases and infrastructure on federal land, and it specifically excludes impacts that are several years or decades in the future or several states away. The way the proposal is worded it eliminates all mention of climate change and could be used to ignore effects of greenhouse gases from projects on federal lands.
The Columbia Law Blog notes that the proposed NEPA update doesn’t include any reference to climate change. The update also is very vague about what “significant impact” is and excludes impacts that are remote in time (years in the future) or geographically remote (several states away), and limits consideration of indirect effects (which could include health effects). The proposal all limits effects to “reasonably foreseeable” and “reasonably close causal relationship” – which would limit analysis of upstream and downstream emissions (methane, nitrogen oxides etc.) and “on-the-ground effects of climate change.”
PLEASE COMMENT, by 11:59pm March 10: https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=CEQ-2019-0003-0001
The Columbia Law Blog discussing this proposed revision is very good, but pretty lengthy. It’s worth looking at just to see the main points they make: http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2020/01/10/five-points-about-the-proposed-revisions-to-ceqs-nepa-regulations/
