By ConservAmerica Policy Advisor Quill Robinson
A majority of Americans worry that the government is doing too little to protect the environment. They might be surprised to learn that some government policies are making it harder to protect wildlife and fight climate change.
The United States has a long history of environmental protection. In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act into law, creating the world’s first national park. Three decades later, Teddy Roosevelt earned his title as the “conservation president” by establishing the U.S. Forest Service, signing the Antiquities Act, and proclaiming 18 U.S. national monuments.
Later in the century, President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and President Reagan joined fellow world leaders in signing the Montreal Protocol. Throughout American history, common-sense environmental policies have conserved our landscapes and wildlife.
As the most pressing environmental issues have changed, some of our laws on the subject have proven insufficient — and even counterproductive.
Take, for example, the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Since the ESA was signed into law in 1973, it has helped protect hundreds of threatened and endangered species, as well as their ecosystems. Thanks to the ESA, the iconic Bald Eagle and American Alligator have been brought back from the brink of extinction. Yet, despite these victories, as successive administrations have layered on new rules to the Endangered Species Act over the decades, it has placed a significant burden on Americans.
The threat of heavy-handed enforcement of the Endangered Species Act has turned some landowners into enemies of wildlife conservation efforts. This dynamic has led private landowners to “shoot, shovel, and shut up” upon discovering an endangered species on their property — fearing aggressive government action that would jeopardize their livelihoods. Clearly, if hard-working Americans feel that it is better to kill a threatened species instead of comply with the Endangered Species Act, then a policy update is overdue.
Another case of environmental policy gone wrong is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). It was created in 1970 to assess the environmental impact of “major” federal actions, which could include anything from building a highway to permitting a new energy project. This process requires federal agencies to produce NEPA reports on the environmental effects of their proposed actions or decisions. While NEPA has lowered the environmental impact of major infrastructure projects and safeguarded fragile ecosystems, it has also become a serious roadblock in the fight against climate change.
Achieving the Biden administration’s goal of 100% renewable energy generation by 2035 will require an unprecedented build-out of clean energy infrastructure. Unfortunately, just breaking ground on a new clean energy project can take years due to NEPA.
For large renewable energy and electric transmission projects, simply preparing an Environmental Impact Statement can take up to nine years. The average time for NEPA process completion is 4.5 years. Meeting our climate goals will be impossible without reforming the National Environmental Policy Act.
While the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act are two clear examples of policy gone wrong, this is not a call to scrap them altogether. Rather, policymakers should work to identify pragmatic reforms that will make these important environmental laws more effective.
In Congress, a bipartisan group of lawmakers recently introduced the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, a bill that will empower state and local officials to lead the way on wildlife conservation efforts. This proactive and collaborative approach will avoid conflict between landowners and the federal government by supporting on the ground conservation efforts, thus reserving ESA listing as a measure of last resort.
In response to NEPA-related clean energy project delays, Democrats and Republicans are now working on a permitting reform deal. Finally recognizing that a well-intentioned environmental policy like NEPA is, in practice, slowing our fight against climate change is a big step in the right direction.
Continuing America’s long tradition of environmental conservation requires recognizing when certain policies are no longer serving their intended purpose. New challenges, in particular climate change, were never imagined by environmental champions like Teddy Roosevelt or Richard Nixon. It’s time for our policymakers to scrutinize environmental policies like NEPA and ESA – and make necessary changes to protect America’s beauty and natural re
sources for generations to come.