A Trump assault on America's bedrock environmental law
"President Donald Trump is my shepherd: I shall not want . . . for dirty air filled with particulate matter and methane, and dirty water that cannot sustain salmon and aquatic life.
"He will make me lie down in national forest clear cuts and an open pit mine beside Bristol Bay in Alaska. He leadeth me beside shorelines being consumed by our rising oceans. He corrupts my soul, not to mention rationality and civility in our national life."
I've repaired to the Psalter in trying to explain the latest, ultimate Trump attack on the bulwark of America's environmental laws. He's going after the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), written by Washington Sen. Henry Jackson and signed into law just over 50 years ago by Republican President Richard Nixon.
The "updating" is designed to write climate change out of any key NEPA evaluation of major development projects, and to ignore catastrophic potential long-term impacts. The 1969 law requires that all environmental consequences -- all -- be taken into account in evaluating projects. But consider the weasel words of Trump's plan:
"Effects should not be considered significant if they are remote in time, geographically remote, or the product of a lengthy causal chain."
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