Working on my NEPA lecture for Monday. If you have thoughts about what should be in these slides, I would love to hear them. - ThreadSky

profsecchi.bsky.social • 23 hours ago

Working on my NEPA lecture for Monday.
If you have thoughts about what should be in these slides, I would love to hear them.

Comments

esghound.com•23 hours ago

hoo boy that's a loaded question

profsecchi.bsky.social•23 hours ago

If you have suggestions for how I should reframe it, I am all ears!

esghound.com•23 hours ago

No I think it's an incredible premise! There are just so many angles

esghound.com•23 hours ago

My view is, btw, the people blame NEPA for "why we don't build stuff anymore" but the fact of the matter is that exclusively NEPA dependant projects (like LNG terminals) have been approved like clockwork for the past 25 years

gfeldman74.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Too many thoughts to share. We just scrubbed every utterance of environmental justice from all of our NEPA guidance and review processes. That won't change how we evaluate and mitigate projects. They can cut page limits, and we'll just add appendices.

gfeldman74.bsky.social•23 hours ago

They can cut timelines, and we'll just wait to officially start the clock. They aren't changing anything but procedure in places where environmental professionals who care work. These measures only help the corrupt destroy the environment faster and easier.

profsecchi.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Thank you for sharing this.
What makes me really sad is that on Wednesday we were supposed to read @ulibarri.bsky.social 's paper on EJ in NEPA and instead we will have to go over the interim final rule and the CEQ memo. I think we will change the schedule to still read the EJ paper!

dustinmulvaney.bsky.social•22 hours ago

Room for 20 slides, same heading? 😎 Arguably it’s inherently polarizing because it is anticipating, not reacting to problems. eg, immediately Trans Alaska pipeline fight led to push to restrict scope, add page limits, etc.

dustinmulvaney.bsky.social•22 hours ago

Litigation is unpopular, but partly w/NEPA bc generally folks don’t realize that’s a consequence of it not being the “permitting” or “decision making” process they think it is. As procedural statute, litigation is really the only route to shape outcomes, except at margins design/mitigation.

dustinmulvaney.bsky.social•22 hours ago

Realization of importance of housing issues and intersections with environmental review misconstrued across all types of env reviews… so NEPA accepted by some otherwise progressives/climate action advocates as counter to housing and clean energy goals.

dustinmulvaney.bsky.social•22 hours ago

Long lines people experience at post office and DMV are read as evidence of “government inefficiency” - so easy to say to public that “NEPA red tape” is just more govt inefficiency and cause of long lines.

dustinmulvaney.bsky.social•22 hours ago

Role of environmental review in stopping major fossil fuel projects, have put a lot of $ into anti NEPA advocacy/think tanks.

profsecchi.bsky.social•21 hours ago

This procedural stuff, a lot of people do not get the value of it. For example I have trouble with faculty who do not understand that shared governance is as much about process as it is about outcomes...

profsecchi.bsky.social•21 hours ago

Basically going for 10 rn but if the students seem interested I will cut something else and stay on this issue!
What I have always thought is that the lack of ex post assessment in US environmental policy is a big problem. This puts even more weight on NEPA.

landh2oplaceumn.bsky.social•21 hours ago

I'm not expert enough to contribute, but would love to see the slides, if they can be made available. I know there are challenges with that, being an instructor myself, because the slides don't contain the commentary. But I bet they are gonna be SUPER interesting!

rsgreacen.bsky.social•23 hours ago

As an advocate, I’ve seen the true power in NEPA being not delay but what the “hard look” reveals. (Compare what the timber sale sediment analysis says to the basin plan standards and the NW Forest Plan regs in light of the fire history and congrats you won that appeal.)

profsecchi.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Yes! The issue of public participation (including by advocate groups) and the role of procedural and recognition justice is something I think a lot of people do not appreciate.

wyattsassman.bsky.social•23 hours ago

I like to emphasize that NEPA was never intended as a public participation statute but rather public interest litigation turned it into one, laying the foundation for the public’s broader role in environmental law.

wyattsassman.bsky.social•23 hours ago

This focus on the public’s role helps explain NEPA’s mirror partisan characterizations as NIMBYism tool and Magna Carta, while also focusing on the fact that none of that character is in the statute itself. That’s what makes the whole reform conversation oddly indirect and not actually about NEPA.

wyattsassman.bsky.social•23 hours ago

On these points, Sam Kalen’s work on NEPAs purpose and development is very good. Paul Sabin’s Public Citizen and this lecture by David Sive are also great resources on early environmental legal advocacy.

https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1390&context=pelr

profsecchi.bsky.social•23 hours ago

VERY helpful, thank you!

profsecchi.bsky.social•23 hours ago

By golly I hear you! I am trained as an economist and was taught to despise litigation as a way to make public policy but I have come to realize it is one of the few ways we have actually HAD public policy on environmental issues in the US.

wyattsassman.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Absolutely! It’s wild how much influence environmental litigation has had—and that influence is all the more important to grapple with when criticizing litigation’s very real limits, costs, and path dependencies.

So thankful you are teaching these issues!

profsecchi.bsky.social•23 hours ago

The class is environmental policy: theory and practice. Many of my students are interested in becoming environmental lawyers. I think it is imperative they understand this stuff (even if it means re-thinking lectures a couple of days in advance!).

wyattsassman.bsky.social•22 hours ago

Love this and completely agree. If I can ever be of help, please tell your students they can reach out to me!

profsecchi.bsky.social•22 hours ago

Thank you so much! I will absolutely keep this in mind.

andiew66.bsky.social•21 hours ago

This sounds cool but “polarizing” stacks the deck in favor of seeing this as two-sided, and like NEPA is to blame. One side has just radicalized in opposition to the slightest consideration of science, context, general wellbeing, or anything that interferes with their simple supremacist worldview.

profsecchi.bsky.social•21 hours ago

I take your point, but note that there are people in the renewable energy space who also have been clamoring for "permitting reform". Maybe controversial is a better word to use?

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