Guest Post by Kevin Lynn
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has been called the Magna Carta of our nation’s environmental laws. Passed in 1969, Congress designed NEPA to provide for environmentally informed decision-making and public outreach on the part of federal agencies. NEPA requires that all the consequences and potential environmental problems of an agency’s actions must be carefully considered before an agency acts.
Though signed into law by President Richard Nixon, a Republican, the championing of environmental causes is more likely to be heard now on the Democratic side of the aisle. For instance, at the end of 2016, Democrats on the House Committee on Natural Resources accused Republicans of waging a “campaign to attack NEPA.” The Democrats of the Committee stated:
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NEPA has proven to be a remarkably effective tool for ensuring that people have a say in federal government decisions that could impact the places they live. Because of NEPA, the public has the ability to know in advance about major federal actions and the right to provide input and have their voices heard. Before NEPA, a disproportionate share of heavily polluting projects ended up being sited in poor and minority communities that lacked political connections.
President Donald J. Trump picked Scott Pruitt to head the EPA, a person who doesn’t believe CO2 emissions are a primary contributor to climate change and who has been accused of working to “cripple the agency.” With the election of President Trump, perhaps the world’s most famous real estate developer, many in the environmental movement fear more than ever that environmental regulations will be on the chopping block.
When President Trump signed Executive Order 13766 and 13807, which called for shortening the environmental review process under NEPA for infrastructure projects, it seems the President sees environmental regulation only as unnecessary and burdensome “red tape” to be cut away. Many environmentalists expressed dismay that this “hacking” away at regulations is not helping the environment.
But does there exist a reason why Trump would embrace NEPA? I would argue there not only exists a reason why he’d embrace it but become its greatest proponent!
The effects of population growth on the environment are undeniable. When NEPA was first passed, only a modest portion of U.S. population growth was attributable to immigration. Today things are very different. Mass immigration drives American population growth almost entirely.
There was a time when environmental hardliners correctly connected the dots between population growth and its harmful impact on the environment. Sadly, those folks along with their views were pushed to the side decades ago. Moreover, environmental organizations have retreated from the topic, knowing that their own big donors and Democratic politicians want unrestrained immigration policies.
The connection among immigration, population growth and the environment may be conservationists’ best chance of preserving our nation’s bedrock environmental law. NEPA has never been applied to immigration policy, although the law contains no waiver for immigration. On the contrary, DHS implements mass immigration programs leading to the importation of tens of millions of foreign nationals without any environmental review whatsoever.
There is no justification under the law for this neglect!
If the Administration were to be the first to apply NEPA to the nation’s immigration programs, it would only further Trump’s agenda. The public has only a poor understanding of the connection between the environment and immigration. The use of NEPA would allow those “poor and minority communities lacking political connections” to finally weigh in on how mass immigration affects the quality of their daily lives and their environment – the expressed concern of open border proponents who claim to want to protect the public against environmental degradation.
Indeed, the public should have been allowed to do so before the nation’s immigration agencies implemented their programs. Until this is done, the Trump Administration should pause these programs.
Our current system is mass immigration on autopilot with no analysis of the environmental consequences. NEPA does not allow this. Neither should President Trump.
See, this is how we fight back. Use the laws to our advantage. Be smart.
Most environmentalists miss the point when it comes to reduction of pollution. Let’s use automobiles as an example. A large “cost vs. benefit” ratio was beneficial when it came to controlling pollution from automobiles. Initially, it did not take much in the way of engineering to “clean up” approximately 85% of automobile pollution. Such environmentally responsible successes were made at minimal cost and did provide a true large benefit in minimizing pollution at the source.
As it stands now, automobiles are approximately 97% pollution-free. While it may have cost a small amount to clean up automobiles to this point, attempting to clean up the remaining 3% would cost thousands of dollars per vehicle–a cost-benefit ratio that is economically and environmentally unsustainable and unachievable.
Most environmentalists are neither scientists or economists and do not understand the implications of attempts to “clean up” the remaining small percentage of pollutants which are negligible.
A 97% reduction in automobile pollution should be considered a success, but to today’s luddite environmentalists, it is never enough.
A major problem is that most environmentalists base their faulty reasoning on emotion, rather than logic and scientific facts.
Environmentalists would do well to encourage the gross polluters such as communist and third-world countries to “clean up their own acts”…
Environmentalism has been the method used to impose communist principles on western society–especially in the USA.
Environmentalists are not content with promoting clean water, air and land, but are hell-bent on controlling human behavior, and yes, promoting extermination plans for much of humanity as these “anointed” types consider mankind to be a pestilence (except for themselves) to be reduced in population “by any means necessary”.
Environmentalists HATE the God-given concept of private property and have imposed government-backed and enforced “land use controls” on private property owners without compensation–clearly an unconstitutional “taking” of private property. If environmentalists want to control land use, let them purchase it themselves–not by government force. Today the only method of negating government-imposed land use restrictions is “shoot, shovel, and shut up”.
If environmentalists had their way, the earth’s human population would be reduced by approximately 90%, with the remainder to (be forced) to live in cities, in soviet-style high rise apartments, utilizing bicycles, buses and trains for transportation. The use of automobiles and access to “pristine wilderness (rural) areas” would be off-limits to us mere mortals, and would only be available for these “anointed” environmentalists.
The “endangered species act” is another abuse of environmentalism. Species are always changing, to adapt to their environments–”survival if the fittest”. In fact, the hoopla over the “spotted owl” (that placed much northwest timber land “off-limits” to logging) turned out to be nothing but scientific misconduct and arrogance. There are virtually identical species in other parts of the northwest.
More scientific malpractice occurred when government biologists attempted to “plant” lynx fur in certain areas to provide an excuse for making those areas “off-limits” for logging or development. Fortunately, these “scientists” were caught–however, no punishment was given.
In a nutshell, today’s environmentalism IS communism… like watermelon…”green” on the outside and “red” (communist) on the inside…
It is interesting to note that communist and third-world countries have the WORST environmental conditions on the planet. Instead of the USA and other developed countries spending billions to get rid of that last half-percent of pollution, it would behoove the communist countries to improve their conditions first.
Reduce Carbon Emissions – what a bunch of horse puckey.
Isn’t CO2 the Demon; the Monster. It has been shoved down our throats – we must reduce CO2.
But, CO2 is not Carbon.
CO2 is odorless and invisible.
Carbon is dirty
So, what game is being played, On You.
The socialists planted the seed and successfully harvested their most desirable outcome- people should not be able to drive cars and thus will be very easy to control when they can’t move around. All they had to do was slowly make cars too expensive to buy. This HAS been done on purpose. Any half wit can look up the original price of their favorite classic car from the 1950’s or 1960’s and convert it with an inflation counter to 2018 money and see that modern cars have more than doubled in real terms, and any future price increases are nearly exponential. This hokum is nearly finished and can only be subverted by doing away with ALL government regulations on cars. Yes, it is time to throw the babies out with the water. If something isn’t collectively done soon to counteract all of this planned control then once there is an action/reaction it will become proverbial guillotine or Zyklon-B time.
The communist wasted $150,000 at our once beautiful river landing to make a floating wood boat dock that wasn’t needed. Then they outlawed all pets (there were usually a couple dogs with their owners) and outlawed us getting rid of big alligators that now swim where we used to. So now I just watch the communist spray us with chem-trails. I’m counting the days until Americans reach Critical Mass.
Has NEPA been attempting to rid us of the chemtrails?
I must be confused here…there.