Trump Rewrites Half-Century-Old Environmental Review Law To Remove Climate Change From List Of Things Federal Agencies Must Consider Before Building Things

The Filing

WASHINGTON. The Trump administration on Wednesday finalized the most sweeping rewrite of the National Environmental Policy Act in 50 years, restoring the freedom of federal agencies to approve pipelines, highways, and drilling projects without first considering whether the projects might affect the environment.

Speaking from the South Lawn surrounded by hard hats, construction vehicles, and several large trucks bearing the names of contractors who were not announced, the President hailed the new Council on Environmental Quality rule as the biggest, most beautiful regulatory rollback in the history of regulatory rollbacks. The 1970 statute, signed by Republican President Richard Nixon, had previously required agencies to study the environmental consequences of major federal actions before taking them, an obligation administration officials characterized as outdated.

Under the new rule, agencies are no longer required to weigh the cumulative impacts of a project across time, no longer required to consider climate effects, and no longer required to evaluate indirect consequences such as where pipeline-delivered oil is eventually burned. Environmental impact statements are capped at 300 pages and must be completed within two years, regardless of a project's size. Agencies may also rely on environmental analyses prepared by the very companies seeking the permits, a streamlining measure officials described as self-evaluating.

"For too long, projects of all kinds, factories, plants, highways, you name it, have been delayed by paperwork," the President said. "Now we just build. Beautiful, beautiful, like in China but better." Officials clarified that several Trump Organization properties had encountered NEPA review in prior decades, a fact one anonymous source within CEQ described as unrelated to anything.

Career staff at the Council on Environmental Quality told reporters they had been instructed not to model the rule's likely effects on minority and low-income communities, which under prior NEPA practice had been studied as a matter of routine. The new rule does not prohibit such modeling, officials emphasized. It merely renders it optional and uncompensated.

At press time, the administration had announced that 47 fossil fuel pipeline projects, three offshore drilling expansions, and one private resort access road in southern Florida had already been moved into expedited review.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who has long objected to environmental reviews of his own properties and now gains a federal framework matching his personal preference.
§The Trump Organization, whose future U.S. construction and resort expansion projects face shorter, narrower, and less rigorous environmental scrutiny.
§Fossil fuel companies, particularly pipeline developers, who avoid mandatory climate analysis of projects whose primary function is moving fossil fuels.
§Mining and timber companies, freed from cumulative-impact analyses on public-land extraction.
§Major infrastructure contractors and donors, who win shortened review timelines for highway, port, and energy projects.
§Industry trade groups including the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which had lobbied for NEPA "modernization" for two decades.
§Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other oil-producing nations, whose global market share is bolstered by accelerated U.S. fossil fuel infrastructure that locks in long-term demand.
§Frontline communities adjacent to highways, refineries, and pipelines, who continue to bear the costs that the federal government is no longer required to study.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment