{"id":18321,"date":"2021-10-08T16:08:53","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T16:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=18321"},"modified":"2021-10-08T16:10:24","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T16:10:24","slug":"policy-news-october-8-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2021\/10\/08\/policy-news-october-8-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Policy News: October 8, 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this issue:<\/strong><\/h2>\n

White House revisiting Trump-era NEPA rule to consider all climate impacts<\/a><\/strong>
\nProposed changes would require developers to more carefully consider how their projects contribute to climate change and pollution.<\/p>\n

Congress<\/a><\/strong>
\nSenate confirms Tracy Stone-Manning as the director of the Bureau of Land Management.<\/p>\n

Executive Branch<\/a>
\n<\/strong>President\u2019s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology meets for the first time in the Biden administration.<\/p>\n

States<\/a>
\n<\/strong>California Governor vetoes tropical deforestation bill.<\/p>\n

International<\/a>
\n<\/strong>European countries agree to protects parts of the North Atlantic to conserve seabird species.<\/p>\n

Scientific Community<\/a>
\n<\/strong>Landscape ecologist Lisa Schulte Moore receives 2021 MacArthur fellowship.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Federal Register opportunities<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>White House floats revising Trump-era NEPA rule to consider all climate impacts<\/strong><\/h2>\n

by Zack Colman, PoliticoPro, 10\/6\/2021<\/em><\/p>\n

The Biden administration proposed Wednesday reviving portions of a regulation underpinning federal environmental reviews, reversing Trump administration changes that limited consideration of climate impacts in agency project evaluations.<\/p>\n

The changes, if adopted, would require developers to more carefully consider how their projects contribute to climate change and pollution.<\/p>\n

The news: <\/strong>The White House Council on Environmental Quality proposed reversing Trump administration changes to the National Environmental Policy Act regulation, which carries implications for environmental reviews on everything from highway projects and fossil fuel lease sales to pipelines and electric transmission lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe basic community safeguards we are proposing to restore would help ensure that American infrastructure gets built right the first time, and delivers real benefits \u2014 not harms \u2014 to people who live nearby,\u201d CEQ Chair Brenda Mallory said in a statement. \u201cPatching these holes in the environmental review process will help reduce conflict and litigation and help clear up some of the uncertainty that the previous administration\u2019s rule caused.\u201d<\/p>\n

The details: <\/strong>CEQ said it would once again direct federal agencies to consider all \u201cdirect,\u201d \u201cindirect\u201d and \u201ccumulative\u201d impacts from projects and decisions.<\/p>\n

Trump-era changes did away with cumulative considerations, meaning agencies only needed to calculate the effects from siting, building and operating a project.<\/p>\n

Assessing cumulative impacts means agencies would analyze the ramifications for climate change by weighing how many greenhouse gases projects and decisions unleash at the end of the value chain. That means, for example, including the emissions from constructing a natural gas pipeline along with the emissions from burning the fuel it would transport for generating electric power.<\/p>\n

The changes also encouraged greater communication with and input from affected communities \u2014 including an emphasis on developing alternative plans for projects that could limit harms \u2014 and would offer federal agencies flexibility to alter procedures that exceed the NEPA guidelines.<\/p>\n

Context: <\/strong>Reducing permitting time has been a priority for both Republican and Democratic administrations. But environmental groups and environmental justice groups made nixing some of former President Donald Trump\u2019s NEPA revisions a top early target and challenged the revisions in court.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a necessary first step to restoring these critically important environmental rules, but we have a long way to go and not much time,\u201d Randi Spivak, director of the Center for Biological Diversity\u2019s public lands program, said in a statement. \u201cThe Biden administration must move urgently and go much further to begin breaking down systemic environmental injustice and addressing climate chaos and the extinction crisis. Otherwise the catastrophic oil spills, wildfires and mass extinctions that appall us today will become frighteningly commonplace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Environmental justice groups have said Trump alterations removed opportunities for them to comment on projects that would affect their communities\u2019 public health and quality of life. Environmental justice communities already face a disproportionate amount of pollution emanating from political disenfranchisement and racist policies like redlining.<\/p>\n

But Trump\u2019s changes also sought to speed permitting for major projects. The Trump administration and allies in the business community contended project opponents and environmental groups had weaponized NEPA to slow development with lawsuits and cumbersome environmental reviews.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next: <\/strong>CEQ said it would propose another set of guidelines over the coming months that would \u201chelp ensure full and fair public involvement in the environmental review process; meet the nation\u2019s environmental, climate change, and environmental justice challenges; provide regulatory certainty to stakeholders; and promote better decision-making consistent with NEPA\u2019s goals and requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the proposed rule here<\/a>, comments are due Nov. 22, 2021.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Congress<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Nominations:<\/strong> The full Senate confirmed<\/a> Tracy Stone-Manning to be the director of the Bureau of Land Management along a strict party-line vote. All Senate Republicans opposed Stone-Manning\u2019s nomination due to her involvement in a tree-spiking case in 1980s and 1990s.<\/p>\n

Stone-Manning most recently was a senior advisor for conservation policy at the National Wildlife Federation and has been a top aide to former Montana Governor Steve Bullock (D) and Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT). She is the first Senate-confirmed director since the end of the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

The full Senate also confirmed Monica Medina to be assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs by a 61-36 vote. Medina worked for NOAA during the Obama and Clinton administrations and published a sustainability newsletter, Our Daily Planet. During her confirmation hearing, Medina pledged to prioritize addressing biodiversity loss, ocean protection and space policy.<\/p>\n

Legislative updates:<\/strong><\/p>\n