Is It the Law or Us? We Must Do Better

Flooding is increasing, while in many parts of the country water is scarce and becoming scarcer. Heat waves are growing more intense and more frequent. So are wildfires. All these adverse trends can be tied to climate change triggered by human-induced warming. We know we need to act—and to act quickly.

Where We Need to Go: Fighting climate change by cutting carbon pollution and expanding clean energy is the best way to build a better world for our communities and for generations to come. A clean energy future can create jobs. It can improve public health. It can diversify local economies.

To avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, we must end our dependence on fossil energy. While oil, coal, and natural gas have served us well for many generations, they do not anymore. We do not have to—and cannot—stop using fossil fuels overnight. However, we must make investments for the future in other sources of energy. The Natural Resources Defense Council has laid out a pathway to a safer climate future. Like most other pathways, NRDC’s proposal calls for a dramatic increase in wind and solar power generation, as well as new transmission lines to deliver the power to where it is needed.

How We Get There: We need to build a lot and we need to build it fast. But how we build matters and some of our core environmental laws can help us build well. Take NEPA—the National Environmental Policy Act, signed into law by President Nixon in 1970. It requires the federal government to assess the environmental impacts of a proposed action before taking it. More than an environmental law, NEPA provides a foundation for democracy. NEPA requires federal agencies to cooperate “with state and local governments, and other concerned public and private organizations.”

Some blame NEPA for getting in the way of building the infrastructure the nation needs. The law, however, is not the problem. We still need what it promises: integration, information, and inclusion.

The problem is in the implementation. We do not need environmental impact statements that spend hundreds of pages covering every possible issue in minute detail. We do need analysis that identifies issues critical to affected communities. This is especially true when these communities are the same ones that have borne environmental burdens in the past, including air pollution, toxic waste, and neglect.

Importantly, the Environmental Justice for All Act, a bill now being considered in the House and the Senate, offers specific ideas about how to involve affected communities efficiently and effectively. It requires notice and outreach to community-based organizations, senior citizen organizations, business associations, public health clinics, and local religious organizations. But agencies do not need new legislation to put these ideas into practice.

NEPA is about the big picture; let’s not lose sight of it. The law speaks of the nation’s commitment “to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.” Who opposes this?

We have become lost in details. Early environmental impact statements were a few dozen pages long. They were succinct, focused, and even eloquent. It is not the law that needs fixing, but how we use it. The law should be a mechanism to identify tradeoffs and discuss how to make them.

We’ve got to roll up our sleeves at the local level to get projects done. All parties involved need to put the issues on the table early. Agencies need to engage diverse stakeholders through robust and creative public outreach. The Inflation Reduction Act provides some of the resources necessary to do this. Project proponents need to work through key community issues, rather than bulldoze over them. Creative mitigation across a landscape in which a proposed project sits can help. Projects that cause less harm can move quickly.

It’s not the law; it’s us. We can and must do better.