This post was originally published on Legal Planet. Reprinted with permission.
They say that history never repeats itself, but it often rhymes. As in many sequels, there will be many things we’ve seen before. Much of that consisted of an all-out attack on environmental law. If you hated the original, you won’t enjoy watching the same thing the second time around. But there are a few additions to the cast and some new backdrops on the set. Today, I’m going to talk about some areas of continuity.
Early presidential actions. Donald Trump will hammer us with a series of executive orders in the first weeks of his presidency. He’ll withdraw from the Paris Agreement again, expunge the social cost of carbon, reinstitute changes in regulatory review that block new rules, and tell agencies to wipe out a lot of Biden rules. He could well go further on some or all of these, such as leaving not only the Paris Agreement but also the underlying treaty signed three decades ago.
Regulatory rollbacks. The Trump administration rolled back around a hundred environmental regulations during his previous term in office, including almost everything relating to climate change. He’s expressed every intention of doing the same thing again.
Assaults on clean energy and environmental agencies. Last time around, Trump proposed crippling budget cuts for EPA, parts of Department of Energy (DOE), and other agencies. We can expect he’ll try them again, with support from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) crew. He and his appointees also conducted open warfare against career staff and tried to gag government scientists. We’ll be seeing that again too, again with a boost from Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative.
Expanding fossil fuels. Trump has vowed to make America rich again riding a tsunami of oil. It’s not clear how much production can actually be increased in four years, but Trump will try to put us on the track of much greater production, use, and export of coal, natural gas, and oil. This will include eliminating barriers to permitting, opening more areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to exploration and production, and encouraging as much domestic use as possible at the expense of renewables. Trump’s appointees at EPA and Interior are likely to support this trend. Same as Trump’s last term, only more so.
The upshot. All of this adds up to a repeat of Trump’s previous term but maybe on an even greater scale. That’s typical of sequels. If the original movie included 10 cars exploding, the sequel needs to have 20 plus on a big airplane. More noise, more destruction, more chaos — the typical action-movie sequel, and the Trump sequel we can expect.
But not everything will be a retread. My next post will discuss some new twists that we might see in the years ahead.
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Daniel Farber | December 9, 2024
They say that history never repeats itself, but it often rhymes. As in many sequels, there will be many things we’ve seen before. Much of that consisted of an all-out attack on environmental law. If you hated the original, you won’t enjoy watching the same thing the second time around. But there are a few additions to the cast and some new backdrops on the set. Today, I’m going to talk about some areas of continuity.
Daniel Farber | December 2, 2024
When the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Chevron, one effect was to raise a crucial question about how courts should apply the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). For decades, courts have deferred to regulations issued by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The basis for that deference was a bit fuzzy, but now it is much fuzzier.
Daniel Farber | November 15, 2024
This is the final installment in our series of posts about the causation issue under NEPA. In our previous post, we laid out NEPA’s purposes and why analogies to tort law can misfire because that area of law has very different purposes. Today, building on our recent working paper, we explain the functional approach to causation that we believe courts should apply.
Daniel Farber | November 14, 2024
Overall, the Supreme Court has articulated a functional approach that is based on the purposes of NEPA, based on the structure and text of the statute. Today’s post will lay the foundation by discussing NEPA’s purposes and how they differ from those of another area of law often used as an analogy, tort law.
Daniel Farber | November 13, 2024
NEPA requires that agencies consider the environmental effects of their projects, but the petitioners in the Seven Counties case raise hairsplitting arguments to exclude obvious effects due to technicalities. We consider their arguments one by one.
Daniel Farber | November 12, 2024
In what could turn out to be another loss for environmental protection in the Supreme Court, the Court is about to decide a major case about the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). The case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, has important implications for issues such as whether NEPA covers climate change impacts. The same groups that succeeded in drastically cutting back on federal wetlands jurisdiction a few years ago are hoping to do the same thing to environmental impact statements. This post will provide the key background on the case.
Sophie Loeb | November 7, 2024
On November 1, the North Carolina Utilities Commission issued its carbon plan order, two months in advance of the filing deadline. The order reflects an earlier settlement agreement among the Public Staff, Duke Energy, and Walmart that allows Duke Energy to build four new methane gas units while marginally increasing the amount of solar, battery storage, and wind resources in its proposed carbon reduction plan. Critically, the selected plan (known as Portfolio 3) fails to meet the 2030 interim carbon reduction timeline in House Bill 951 — the state’s carbon reduction law — and likely delays compliance to 2035.
Jose Coronado-Flores | October 31, 2024
Latino and Hispanic people have played a significant role in struggles for racial, economic, and climate justice. In observance of Hispanic Heritage Month, our Senior Policy Analyst for Climate Justice, Catalina Gonzalez, reached out to several Latino advocates and organizers working on the frontlines of climate justice campaigns. Today, we are sharing a response from Jose Coronado-Flores of CASA of Maryland.
Amy Tamayo | October 30, 2024
Latino and Hispanic people have played a significant role in struggles for racial, economic, and climate justice. In observance of Hispanic Heritage Month, our Senior Policy Analyst for Climate Justice, Catalina Gonzalez, reached out to several Latino advocates and organizers working on the frontlines of climate justice campaigns. Today, we are sharing a response from Amy Tamayo of Alianza de Mujeres Campesinas.