Climate Of Disaster, Con't

The Trump regime is about to eliminate the need for climate change analysis from environmental impact studies from all future federal infrastructure projects, meaning the effects of massive infrastructure builds on the future literally won't matter to the government anymore.

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.

The act requires the federal government to prepare detailed analyses of projects that could have significant environmental effects, including long-term impacts that courts have said include climate change. Since 1970, when the law was enacted, it has undergone only one major change. That was in 1983, when the White House Council on Environmental Quality limited the use of worst-case scenarios in project reviews.

But the Trump administration has been aggressive in its efforts to roll back environmental regulations. The 50 or so pages of revisions that the Council on Environmental Quality is expected to make public on Wednesday would not amend the act itself. Rather, they would revise the rules that guide the implementation of the law.

Once the proposed rules are filed in the federal register, the public will have 60 days to comment on them, the official said. A final regulation is expected before the presidential election in November.

Dan Schneider, spokesman for the Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement that the environmental law was overdue for an update. “The Trump administration is focused on improving the environmental review and permitting process while ensuring a safe, healthy, and productive environment for all Americans,” he said.

In other words, climate change impact on all projects and even environmental impact on a lot of projects would happen, and then simply be ignored by the Trump regime.  This will absolutely get tied up in the courts and make it to SCOTUS for sure.

We'll see what happens, but a second Trump term and its resulting SCOTUS picks would almost certainly spell the end of NEPA.

Oh, and severely damage humanity's survival on the planet.  No pressure.