Take Action Today against Trump’s Assault on Environmental Protections

It’ll only a few minutes of your time

Redwood photo by Kira Saks, CC BY 4.0. Hand by Pixabay, public domain.

Please take the time to submit a comment to the Feds expressing your disapproval of the Trump administration’s proposed gutting of our most important environmental regulations. The 30-day comment period ends on March 27^th. Please also share this post to help spread the word.

Here’s what’s up:

The Trump Administration is threatening to nullify the National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA. What is NEPA?

“NEPA is our nation’s keystone environmental law. It requires agencies to assess the environmental and public health impacts of federal permits, funding, and other actions, and embeds environmental values in federal decision-making,” states EarthJustice. For example, “when the government wants to build a toxic waste incinerator in your neighborhood, run a dangerous pipeline past your child’s school, or put a massive, costly freeway on top of a wetland, [NEPA] gives you the right to find out and fight back.”

NEPA doesn’t function on its own. It’s implemented through regulations put out by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Trump’s so-called “Unleashing American Energy” executive order “ordered CEQ to propose rescinding NEPA regulations in favor of issuing guidance to federal agencies,” which the CEQ did on Feb. 25^h.

Because of the way that Federal law works, these changes have to be proposed first, with a 30-day comment period, before becoming permanent. That’s the period we’re in now.

If these changes become permanent, the implementation of NEPA will go to individual agencies within the Federal government, which are being stuffed with Trump appointees, who of course won’t be interested in doing anything like that. It’ll just be a free-for-all, to the detriment of many places and people.

This will affect everyone who benefits from environmental regulation, which is to say everyone.

How to submit a comment

Do it online here. You can write something up ahead of time and attach it, or you can type or copy/paste into the box provided. You can submit a comment as an individual or an organization. If there’s an organization you’re part of it, please consider getting them to submit a comment from their letterhead.

Jim Pattiz

over at More Than Just Parks has put together a great sample comment that you can copy/paste or personalize as you wish. Go ahead and do that if that’s what easiest for you.

You can also send snail mail. The form above has instructions.

Please consider submitting a comment. The reason we have NEPA in the first place is because of citizen action. It was Nixon, after all, who signed it into law, and he wouldn’t have done so with being pressured.

H/t to More Than Just Parks for bringing this important issue to my attention. Subscribe to them for important updates like this, plus great content about public lands.