Addressing Global Warming (Climate Change) in State and National Regulatory Documents: 2008 Update

摘要

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), Washington's State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), and an assortment of other state and regional environmental regulations require lead agencies to evaluate the impacts of proposed projects on the environment and present feasible measures to offset said impacts. With the growing awareness of climate change and its potential impact on the environment, there has been mounting pressure to address climate change within the existing regulatory framework.With the passage of the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) in California, in addition to numerous climate change related lawsuits filed by the California Attorney General and prominent environmental organizations, a substantive analysis of climate change is virtually required as part of the CEQA process several years prior to any guidelines offered by California's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) on how to address climate change in state regulatory documents.A similar effort to reduce statewide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is underway in the state of Washington. State-level action is demonstrating the feasibility of early GHG reduction strategies. Local initiative by the city of Seattle and by King County (which encompasses the Seattle area) has provided guidance on how to address, and even adapt to the likely effects of climate change, and as such they represent some of the most comprehensive examples of local efforts to address climate change through the combined tools of regulation, incentive, public-private partnerships and environmental impact assessment.Although some would contend that climate change analysis is better addressed with national and regional planning efforts rather than the conventional environmental review process, the need to address climate change as part of the NEPA process and mini-NEPA's (such as CEQA and SEP A) will persist until landmark legislation or appellate court decisions are available or until planning efforts demonstrate concrete results in reducing GHG emissions. In this paper, a review of recent legislation, legal activity, state and local initiatives, and third-party guidance on how to address climate change in regulatory documents will be discussed with an emphasis on NEPA and statewide and local initiatives in California and Washington.