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How the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Works

44 points by jseliger 4y ago

rayiner 4y ago
The irony is that NEPA has nuked the ability to densify and build infrastructure to respond to climate change. It takes huge amounts of money to even do an EIS, say to build a rail line. So you get voters to sign off on that. Then whatever enthusiasm you built up for that dissipates in the 4-5 years on average that it takes to do the EIS. Then you litigate it for some more years after that. Then a decade later you ask voters for more money to build the thing. By then the project is substantially less attractive due to changes from the EIS process. You present this worse thing to voters, who think they already paid for the subway, and ask them for even more money. And they’re like wtf.
- nine_k 4y ago
  Cynically, this can be the point. When building anything at all becomes prohibitively hard, most things don't get built, and the environment remains unchanged, that is, presented. Only things absence of which causes a real, strong, unceasing pain can withstand the process and finally get built, at much larger expense and at a smaller scale than planned initially.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    It is the point but there’s nothing cynical about it. In the 1960s-1970s when NEPA was passed, the environmental movement was focused on conservation. They didn’t think subways were a great thing. The alignment of environmentalists and urbanists is a later trend that’s arisen in response to climate change concerns.
    - hammock 4y ago
      I wouldn't go so far as to say it had anything to do with global warming or climate change. Urban sprawl is terrible for the environment in so many other ways, and this fact has been known long before global warming became a big issue
      - CSSer 4y ago
        Most people appear to have a very one-dimensional view of the environment overall. If this is true, it means that even if most agree urban sprawl is bad people still struggle to agree on how to fix it. Have you ever read William Cronon’s The Trouble with Wilderness? It was published in ‘96. The core idea still doesn’t seem widely accepted or even acknowledged. For a humorous anecdote to support this, I once matched with a girl on a dating app who did so only to lecture me about building cairns because I had a picture containing one (dodged that bullet). She had no idea I was within city limits and didn’t seem to care. I had violated the sanctity of nature because someone had told her that she should think so.
        QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
        From a hacker news pragmatism point of view, I wonder which wins a marginal ratio of amphibian lives saved to economic damage contest: shutting down or regulating polluting industries vs imprecisely lecturing cairn builders on tinder
      - nine_k 4y ago
        Urban sprawl, among other considerations, was seen in 1950s as a way to save more lives in an event of a possible nuclear war. It is easy to destroy the entire Manhattan with a couple of nukes, but it won't have the same effect over Houston or Bay Area. Now this consideration is moot, but the planning decisions made back then took root. Powerful interests like car makers, NIMBYism, white flight, etc all played to that same hand.
    - kmeisthax 4y ago
      One thing to note is that environmentalism itself has undergone some very odd political shifts and realignments. 70s-era conservationists have more political ground in common with Donald Trump now than they do with their ostensible successors fighting climate change. The Sierra Club of that era wanted to shut down the US immigration system because exporting that way of life was considered an environmental catastrophe. Similar concerns over overpopulation were used to dogwhistle racism - after all, the problem isn't us, it's them. I suspect this is also why California is full of NIMBYs. While there are plenty of loud-and-proud right-wingers in that state, they're also far easier to circle the wagons around. If you are a racist in California it's more effective to do the normal liberal virtue-signalling thing, and then concern-troll the shit out of literally anything in your state that might actually make progress towards your stated goals. It's the "rich Mexicans only" strategy. Correctly point out the injustice of the American immigration system, but find every excuse you can to build a shadow immigration system out of housing costs and property tax grandfathering that's far more opaque and biased.
      - panick21_ 4y ago
        This something always ignored, environmentalists were very strongly against population increase. Books like 'the Population Bomb' I consider this essentially, anti-human philosophy. Many people for example wanted to prevent technology exchange with India, in order to make sure Indians starved now, rather then millions later. They also wanted domestic population control measures, harsher then even those in China. Forced sterilizations and so on.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I think the EIS process is inefficient, but is there any evidence that voters don’t understand it and consequently believe that they’re fully funding projects? I find that hard to believe.
  - Kamq 4y ago
    I'm a voter and I have zero idea how the EIS process actually works. I could definitely see people think that the first time a budget is passed on something, it's funded.
  - susiecambria 4y ago
    I'm a policy wonk and spent 25 years working on local Washington, DC issues. Trust me that regular ol' people who don't work on a particular policy/issue do not know the finer points. And the EIS process, like many other local and federal processes is a specialty. Do I have evidence? No. But my 25 years in public policy and working with members of the public tells me that most I've encountered can repeat what you tell them but don't truly understand.
  - lazide 4y ago
    It has nothing to do with that per-se (as in if you gave everyone an education on it, it wouldn’t solve the problem). It’s more about attention span, demographic turnover, economic changes/shifts, etc. the average American moves every 7 years, so projects that take a decade or two may literally only have half the same people voting on it the second time. It’s now a completely different decade. It may have literally started pre-9/11.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  professional urban planning is very contentious, time-consuming and complex. Moronic side-jeering is definitely part of that friction. source: professional urban planners
- refurb 4y ago
  It’s the eternal problem of “of course we should make sacrifices for X, but it’s that other group who should sacrifice, not me”.
Proven 4y ago

44 points by jseliger 4y ago

The irony is that NEPA has nuked the ability to densify and build infrastructure to respond to climate change. It takes huge amounts of money to even do an EIS, say to build a rail line. So you get voters to sign off on that. Then whatever enthusiasm you built up for that dissipates in the 4-5 years on average that it takes to do the EIS. Then you litigate it for some more years after that. Then a decade later you ask voters for more money to build the thing. By then the project is substantially less attractive due to changes from the EIS process. You present this worse thing to voters, who think they already paid for the subway, and ask them for even more money. And they’re like wtf.

nine_k 4y ago
Cynically, this can be the point. When building anything at all becomes prohibitively hard, most things don't get built, and the environment remains unchanged, that is, presented. Only things absence of which causes a real, strong, unceasing pain can withstand the process and finally get built, at much larger expense and at a smaller scale than planned initially.
- rayiner 4y ago
  It is the point but there’s nothing cynical about it. In the 1960s-1970s when NEPA was passed, the environmental movement was focused on conservation. They didn’t think subways were a great thing. The alignment of environmentalists and urbanists is a later trend that’s arisen in response to climate change concerns.
  - hammock 4y ago
    I wouldn't go so far as to say it had anything to do with global warming or climate change. Urban sprawl is terrible for the environment in so many other ways, and this fact has been known long before global warming became a big issue
    - CSSer 4y ago
      Most people appear to have a very one-dimensional view of the environment overall. If this is true, it means that even if most agree urban sprawl is bad people still struggle to agree on how to fix it. Have you ever read William Cronon’s The Trouble with Wilderness? It was published in ‘96. The core idea still doesn’t seem widely accepted or even acknowledged. For a humorous anecdote to support this, I once matched with a girl on a dating app who did so only to lecture me about building cairns because I had a picture containing one (dodged that bullet). She had no idea I was within city limits and didn’t seem to care. I had violated the sanctity of nature because someone had told her that she should think so.
      - QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
        From a hacker news pragmatism point of view, I wonder which wins a marginal ratio of amphibian lives saved to economic damage contest: shutting down or regulating polluting industries vs imprecisely lecturing cairn builders on tinder
    - nine_k 4y ago
      Urban sprawl, among other considerations, was seen in 1950s as a way to save more lives in an event of a possible nuclear war. It is easy to destroy the entire Manhattan with a couple of nukes, but it won't have the same effect over Houston or Bay Area. Now this consideration is moot, but the planning decisions made back then took root. Powerful interests like car makers, NIMBYism, white flight, etc all played to that same hand.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    One thing to note is that environmentalism itself has undergone some very odd political shifts and realignments. 70s-era conservationists have more political ground in common with Donald Trump now than they do with their ostensible successors fighting climate change. The Sierra Club of that era wanted to shut down the US immigration system because exporting that way of life was considered an environmental catastrophe. Similar concerns over overpopulation were used to dogwhistle racism - after all, the problem isn't us, it's them. I suspect this is also why California is full of NIMBYs. While there are plenty of loud-and-proud right-wingers in that state, they're also far easier to circle the wagons around. If you are a racist in California it's more effective to do the normal liberal virtue-signalling thing, and then concern-troll the shit out of literally anything in your state that might actually make progress towards your stated goals. It's the "rich Mexicans only" strategy. Correctly point out the injustice of the American immigration system, but find every excuse you can to build a shadow immigration system out of housing costs and property tax grandfathering that's far more opaque and biased.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      This something always ignored, environmentalists were very strongly against population increase. Books like 'the Population Bomb' I consider this essentially, anti-human philosophy. Many people for example wanted to prevent technology exchange with India, in order to make sure Indians starved now, rather then millions later. They also wanted domestic population control measures, harsher then even those in China. Forced sterilizations and so on.
woodruffw 4y ago
I think the EIS process is inefficient, but is there any evidence that voters don’t understand it and consequently believe that they’re fully funding projects? I find that hard to believe.
- Kamq 4y ago
  I'm a voter and I have zero idea how the EIS process actually works. I could definitely see people think that the first time a budget is passed on something, it's funded.
- susiecambria 4y ago
  I'm a policy wonk and spent 25 years working on local Washington, DC issues. Trust me that regular ol' people who don't work on a particular policy/issue do not know the finer points. And the EIS process, like many other local and federal processes is a specialty. Do I have evidence? No. But my 25 years in public policy and working with members of the public tells me that most I've encountered can repeat what you tell them but don't truly understand.
- lazide 4y ago
  It has nothing to do with that per-se (as in if you gave everyone an education on it, it wouldn’t solve the problem). It’s more about attention span, demographic turnover, economic changes/shifts, etc. the average American moves every 7 years, so projects that take a decade or two may literally only have half the same people voting on it the second time. It’s now a completely different decade. It may have literally started pre-9/11.
mistrial9 4y ago
professional urban planning is very contentious, time-consuming and complex. Moronic side-jeering is definitely part of that friction. source: professional urban planners
refurb 4y ago
It’s the eternal problem of “of course we should make sacrifices for X, but it’s that other group who should sacrifice, not me”.

Proven 4y ago