Photo: Zoran Orcik via Shutterstock
January 9, 2020 (BOSTON, MA) – Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) released the following statement today after the Trump Administration unveiled significant rollbacks to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
“In today’s proposal, President Trump has arrogated to himself the power to repeal the nation’s foundational environmental protection law by fiat, in defiance of the language and history of the statute,” said CLF President Brad Campbell. “This unlawful gift to the fossil fuel industry excludes climate impacts from consideration and redefines the scope of the law to a fraction of those reviewed for generations. This lawless action at the behest of the oil and gas industry will not survive judicial or public scrutiny, and continues the president’s war on science, the environment, rationality, and fact-based decision-making.”
NEPA is one of the country’s core environmental laws, and it requires federal agencies to evaluate the potential impact of infrastructure projects before they are approved. The Trump Administration has proposed new regulations that exclude climate change considerations from this review process and drastically limit the number of projects covered, which will have serious consequences.
CLF experts are available for further comment.
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