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Climate Change Under Nepa: Avoiding Cursory Consideration Of Greenhouse Gases, Amy L. Stein
Climate Change Under Nepa: Avoiding Cursory Consideration Of Greenhouse Gases, Amy L. Stein
Amy L. Stein
Neither the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) nor its implementing regulations require consideration of climate change in NEPA documentation. Yet an ever-growing body of NEPA case law related to climate change is making it increasingly difficult for a federal agency to avoid discussing the impacts of those emissions under NEPA in its Environmental Impact Statements (“EISs”). Although consideration of climate change in NEPA documents sounds right in theory, within the current legal framework, the NEPA documents provide only lip service to the goals of NEPA without any meaningful consideration of climate change. An empirical evaluation of two years of selected …
A Functional Approach To Risks And Uncertainties Under Nepa, Todd Aagaard
A Functional Approach To Risks And Uncertainties Under Nepa, Todd Aagaard
Todd S Aagaard
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) mandates that federal agencies evaluate the environmental impacts of their proposed actions. This requires agencies to make ex ante predictions about environmental consequences that often involve a significant degree of factual risk or uncertainty. Considerable controversy exists regarding how agencies should address such risks and uncertainties. Current NEPA law adopts a largely ad hoc approach that lacks coherence and analytical rigor. Some environmentalists and legal scholars have called for a greater emphasis on worst-case analysis in environmental planning, especially after the recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the meltdowns …