THE TRUMP CARD: TARNISHING PLANNING, DEMOCRACY, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

摘要

CEQ's proposed overhaul of its NEPA regulations would not only facilitate the Trump Administration's efforts to disregard environmental concerns, but also truncate and diminish the participatory process that has long played such a critical role in promoting NEPA's stop-and-think and disclosure functions. NEPA has made careful democratic planning a bedrock of federal decisionmaking and, according to a study by the Environmental Law Institute, "affected governance for the better." Though not flawless, it has been hailed by Democrats and Republicans alike for, as Russell Train (Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Richard Nixon) put it, recognizing "that what the people know has great value to a government that seeks their knowledge and takes it seriously." If policymakers are intent on improving the implementation of NEPA, there are a number of straightforward actions much more likely to lead to efficient decisionmaking without compromising NEPA's goals of informed decisionmaking, transparency, and democratic governance. These include providing agencies sufficient resources, as well as fully implementing recent bipartisan initiatives that focus not only on efficiency, but also more effective review. Reforms that would make the NEPA process more effective at avoiding or curtailing the adverse environmental effects of government decisionmaking might include enhanced interagency coordination in the dissemination of NEPA-related information, post-approval monitoring, and even project implementation. They might also include requiring agencies to learn by monitoring the actual effects of adopted actions and making appropriate adjustments to account for such new information. CEQ's proposal follows none of these paths. Instead, it is an ill-disguised hatchet job on NEPA's capacity to foster informed deliberation, public participation, agency coordination, and judicial checks on agency action. If the Administration's goal is to impair deliberative democracy on environmental issues, this proposal is tailor-made.