Administration Says Climate Change Will Not Be Considered in Environmental Reviews

Today, the Trump administration announced its plan to rewrite the rules for a bedrock environmental law called the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The administration’s proposed changes are intended to speed up development activities, including on public lands and waters, and would do so by limiting opportunities for public engagement and environmental review. The new rules would also essentially exclude climate change entirely from NEPA analyses.

Click on the letter above to read our full testimony to CEQ on the proposed changes to implementing NEPA.

For everyone concerned about a changing climate, the administration’s proposal should be troubling because it will exclude climate change as an environmental consideration by eliminating the requirement to analyze “cumulative effects.” Analyzing the cumulative effects of decisions is important because there are certain types of actions—notably including those related to greenhouse gas emissions—where any individual decision may not be significant, but taken together with other similar actions, these decisions create significant environmental problems. For example, if there is decision to open a coal mine on public land, the emissions associated with that mine taken alone may not have a significant effect on the climate; considered alongside the effects of other, similar, activities, however, these emissions are having a tremendously significant impact, and failing to analyze individual contributions to the broader problem is deeply problematic. You can read our letter to CEQ in response to the approximately 200-page proposed rule right here.

More broadly, on public lands, Americans have a right to a public process. One of the biggest ways that we are ensured a say is through NEPA. These new regulations would significantly scale back your ability to have a voice over your public lands.

NEPA requires land managers to evaluate the impact of big changes to public lands – like building pipelines, developing new mines, or enlarging parking lots – and study the potential impacts on air and water quality, recreation access, potential pollution, and more.

Industry groups and extractive companies who know their actions have a big effect on the environment would like to see NEPA scaled back to make it easier and faster for them to develop public lands. In August 2018, we shared that the White House Council on Environmental Quality was considering making changes to its NEPA rules. More than 2000 of you wrote comments, which appears to represent a very substantial portion of the approximately 12,500 comments CEQ says it received. Today’s announcement is the next step in the process as CEQ proposes changes to its NEPA regs for the first time in decades.

So what happens next? The administration is required to accept public comments until March 10, and it’s valuable for us to generate a big public outcry in support of NEPA’s core values. After the comment period, the administration will review public feedback and draft its final plan. Any regulations that go into effect near the end of this presidential term could be rolled back with a new administration, so the current administration is eager to complete these regulations now.

We’ve made it easy to submit a comment directly to CEQ. We’ll update this post when we have additional guidance on commenting, but if you want to strike while the iron is hot, you can comment now through the link below. While we’ve suggested sample language, we encourage you to make the comment your own.