Trump Rule Would Exclude Climate Change in Infrastructure Planning

[PufPuf23]

Source: NY Times via msn.com

Trump Rule Would Exclude Climate Change in Infrastructure Planning

WASHINGTON — Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects, according to a Trump administration plan that would weaken the nation’s benchmark environmental law.

The proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and other fossil fuel projects that have been stymied when courts ruled that the Trump administration did not properly consider climate change when analyzing the environmental effects of the projects.

According to one government official who has seen the proposed regulation but was not authorized to speak about it publicly, the administration will also narrow the range of projects that require environmental review. That could make it likely that more projects will sail through the approval process without having to disclose plans to do things like discharge waste, cut trees or increase air pollution.

The new rule would no longer require agencies to consider the “cumulative” consequences of new infrastructure. In recent years courts have interpreted that requirement as a mandate to study the effects of allowing more planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. It also has meant understanding the impacts of rising sea levels and other results of climate change on a given project.


Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-rule-would-exclude-climate-change-in-infrastructure-planning/ar-BBYAZ5h?ocid=spartanntp

[rickyhall]

1. We could have fires the size California soon.

[mountain grammy]

2. We see how those policies are working in Australia

[nwduke]

3. ...and this moronic imbecile

Continues to wreak havoc on our environment! The stupidity is astounding!

[NCjack]

4. A huge windfall for the construction industries. We can rebuild our infrastructure 2 or 3 times

until we get it in harmony with the new global climate.

[sakabatou]

5. There's money to be made in Earth's ashes!

[Hestia]

6. Just a Q - Since the cabinet is "acting" does this not mean that new regs don't count?

If we have to wait until Drumpf has been drug from the office, can we not wave *our* magic wands and undo all these regs due to them being enacted by "acting" directors/secretaries, etc? If they undo something, can one person, Secretary of [insert office here] can just undo all the damage they have done?

I honestly do not see how anyone - one person - can undo decades of federal regulations (ala Perdue & USDA move to Kansas). How? How? How?

If being so, we could have had a real government and country that we've wanted all along, decades ago, unless we've had smoke blown up our butts, and there really are more libertarians than ever dreamed of, along with complacency, and we have been lied to about how the whole systems works.

[scarletwoman]

7. How can trump just unilaterally change NEPA - an Act passed by Congress & signed into law in 1969?

How does that work? Isn't Congress supposed to pass any changes to existing laws?

[Marthe48]

8. read on another thread that Australia is 57 of 57

on a list of nations taking steps to fight climate change. Look there. Then see the path trump wants to put us on.

I am sorry for Australia, sorry for the 1/2 billion dead animals, whole species gone, people on the beaches wearing masks, but then reading that story, I can't help wondering why? Maybe Australia couldn't put the brakes on before coming to this disaster, but JC, we are seeing climate disaster and trump, that a*hole pos wants to stop any effort to mitigate it?

[Ilsa]

9. I suppose a trump rule would exclude

Earthquake considerations in infrastructure planning in California as well.

[CTyankee]

10. In the words of Greta Tungberg How DARE you?!"