What Is NEPA & Why Is it Important to Global Warming?
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), one of the United States' most important environmental protection statutes, was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970 in order to improve government protection for the environment. NEPA created procedural requirements that apply to all national government agencies and remain critically important. It's sometimes called the Magna Carta of U.S. environmental law. Groups, like the Sierra Club, have argued NEPA regulations should be amended to address global warming.
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NEPA Goals
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NEPA was a milestone in the history of environmental legislation, in part because it established environmental protection as an important factor in federal decision-making and planning. The first section of NEPA describes several goals of the statute, among these the recognition of the critical importance of environmental protection and the need to balance economic growth with environmental impact.
NEPA Procedural Requirements
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NEPA's most important provisions are the far-reaching procedural requirements it sets for federal projects. Under the act, all federal agencies when planning, financing or approving a project must prepare an Environmental Assessment or an Environmental Impact Statement (EA and EIS). In so doing, the agency must evaluate the impact the project could have on the environment and consider available alternatives. Personnel and hiring decisions, minor renovations and repairs and a number of other actions are excluded from these regulations; if an action isn't already defined as excluded, then the agency must prepare an EA. NEPA also created a Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) that acts as an advisory panel for the president.
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NEPA and Global Warming
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NEPA did not originally specify global warming as being among the environmental impacts that federal agencies must consider, but since greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are an environmental impact, courts have ruled on several occasions in the past that government agencies must evaluate global warming-related impacts also. Despite court rulings, there's still some uncertainty among federal agencies about how to apply the NEPA regulations where climate change impacts are concerned. Part of the problem is that drafting an EIS takes much more work than drafting an EA, since the requirements for an EIS are far more detailed. Ordinarily, agencies prepare an EA first and if they find from the EA that the impacts of a decision are likely to be significant, they must file an EIS as well. Incorporating global warming considerations into this process could change what kinds of decisions merit an EIS filing, since many actions that don't have other significant environmental impacts do increase GHG emissions.
Proposed Changes
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In 2008, three environmental groups--among them the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council--filed a petition requesting that the CEQ amend the NEPA regulations to deal with these uncertainties by specifically addressing climate change. As of January 2010, the CEQ responded in a public statement that they were "considering" issuing guidance to federal agencies on how to incorporate possible climate change impacts into the NEPA process.
Effects
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By requiring federal agencies to consider alternatives that minimize emissions, NEPA can potentially help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Critics contend that NEPA mandates that federal agencies consider alternatives, but does not require that they adopt them, meaning that agencies may often do what they originally intended even after preparing an EA or EIS. Other critics, like Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, have argued that NEPA enables opponents of a necessary and beneficial project to delay it by filing lawsuits and that amending the NEPA regulations to require all federal agencies to analyze climate change impacts will delay economic recovery. This controversy is still ongoing.
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References
- Photo Credit pollution in a rural environment image by Scrivener from Fotolia.com
