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9 episodes with National Environmental Policy Act
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EELP attorney Hannah Perls speaks with Professor Andrew Mergen, faculty director of Harvard's Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, about the latest updates to the National Environmental Policy Act, including new agency implementing procedures, the Supreme Court's recent opinion in Eagle County, and amendments included in the One Big Beautiful Bill recently passed by Congress. They talk about what these changes mean in practice for project developers, impacted communities, and the environment. Transcript: https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/CleanLaw_EP104-Transcript.pdf Links: NEPA overview https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/nepa-overview/ NEPA Regulatory Tracker page https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/tracker/nepa-environmental-review-requirements/ NEPA after Eagle County decision https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/the-future-of-nepa-and-federal-permitting-after-eagle-county/ CEQ's template and agencies' procedures https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/decoding-agencies-new-nepa-procedures/ "Energy emergency" declaration https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/the-trump-administrations-aggressive-anti-regulatory-pro-fossil-fuel-directives/
A record-breaking heat wave strained the U.S. power grid last week, highlighting the risks of rising electricity demand and extreme weather. POLITICO's Zack Colman breaks down how the grid held up and the Trump administration's plans for future heat waves. Plus, the Energy Department and FERC proposed slashing current environmental analysis procedures based off of the current National Environmental Policy Act on Monday and replacing them with new, more limited procedures. Zack Colman covers climate change for POLITICO. Nirmal Mulaikal is the co-host and producer of POLITICO Energy. Alex Keeney is a senior audio producer at POLITICO. Gloria Gonzalez is the deputy energy editor for POLITICO. Matt Daily is the energy editor for POLITICO. For more news on energy and the environment, subscribe to Power Switch, our free evening newsletter: https://www.politico.com/power-switchAnd for even deeper coverage and analysis, read our Morning Energy newsletter by subscribing to POLITICO Pro: https://subscriber.politicopro.com/newsletter-archive/morning-energy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Episode SummaryThe latest episode of the “The Stream by AASHTO” podcast features Ted Boling, a partner with Perkins Coie, with over 30 years of public service – who discusses recent changes to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, and the removal of regulations by the Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ.Episode NotesThis podcast series is part of the AASHTO Environmental Management technical service program operated by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. It explores a wide array of environmental topics that affect state departments of transportation and the infrastructure programs they oversee.In February 2025, the CEQ announced an Interim Final Rule that removes its longstanding NEPA implementing regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations. This shift places the responsibility for NEPA compliance directly on individual federal agencies, allowing them to follow their own procedures rather than a centralized set of rules.In this podcast episode, Boling delves into how, if NEPA is revoked, it removes a “universal framework” that will prevent federal agencies working in tandem on environmental reviews.Boling also outlines the potential impact of mass layoffs within the federal government, especially among senior leadership and recent hires, and how that could slow down decision-making regarding environmental reviews for infrastructure projects.
This week: An all-star roundtable with our favorite law wonks, wherein we try to figure out where the Supreme Court is taking the National Environmental Policy Act — the most important federal law regulating the environmental costs of development.Support the show
Did the Supreme Court just make it easier to build things in this country — or did it give a once-in-a-lifetime gift to the fossil fuel industry? Last week, the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 against environmentalists who sought to use a key permitting law, the National Environmental Policy Act, to slow down a railroad in a remote but oil-rich part of Utah. Even the court's liberals ruled against the green groups. But the court's conservative majority issued a much stronger and more expansive ruling, urging lower courts to stop interpreting the law as they have for years. That decision, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, may signal a new era for what has been called the “Magna Carta” of environmental law.On this week's episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with Nicholas Bagley, a University of Michigan law professor and frequent writer on permitting issues. He is also Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's former chief legal counsel. Rob, Jesse, and Nick discuss what NEPA is, how it has helped (and perhaps hindered) the environment, and why it's likely to change again in the near future. Shift Key is hosted by Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University, and Robinson Meyer, Heatmap's executive editor. Mentioned: The Supreme Court Just Started a Permitting RevolutionThe Supreme Court's Green Double Standard, By Nick BagleyBagley's article on the procedure fetishKey statistics about how NEPA works in the governmentJudge Skelly's 1971 Calvert Cliffs rulingHouse Republicans' NEPA reform proposal Jesse's downshift; Rob's downshift. --Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this case, the court considered this issue: Does the National Environmental Policy Act require an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the proximate effects of the action over which the agency has regulatory authority?The case was decided on May 29, 2025.The Supreme Court held that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to consider the environmental effects of federal projects by preparing a detailed environmental impact statement (E-I-S), but it does not impose substantive limits on agencies' decisions. NEPA only applies to the environmental consequences of the proposed project itself, not to impacts from future or geographically separate projects that the proposed project might cause. The Surface Transportation Board complied with NEPA by addressing the environmental effects of constructing and operating an 88-mile freight railroad in Utah. NEPA did not require the Board to evaluate environmental impacts from increased oil drilling in the Uinta Basin or increased oil refining along the Gulf Coast—both of which were separate activities outside the Board's regulatory control. Justice Brett Kavanaugh authored the 5-3 majority opinion of the Court, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett.NEPA's role is procedural: it ensures agencies and the public are informed about potential environmental effects but does not direct agencies to reject projects with environmental downsides. Courts reviewing an E-I-S must apply a “rule of reason” and defer to the agency's decisions about the scope and detail of environmental analysis, recognizing that such decisions depend on scientific, technical, and policy judgments that fall within the agency's expertise. Agencies have discretion to omit analysis of speculative or weakly connected effects—particularly when those effects depend on future decisions by other entities or fall under the authority of other regulators. The Board's choice not to analyze upstream drilling or downstream refining effects was reasonable because those were not part of the project under review and because the Board lacks the authority to control such activities.A mere possibility that a project might lead to additional development does not impose an obligation under NEPA to assess all environmental impacts of hypothetical, unrelated projects. Even if a project's effects are foreseeable, NEPA does not make one agency responsible for evaluating the far-reaching environmental costs of others' conduct unless those effects are directly caused by the agency's decision and fall within its regulatory scope. Therefore, the Board's approval of the railway project, based on an E-I-S that focused on the rail line itself, satisfied NEPA's requirements.Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored an opinion concurring in the judgment, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, agreeing that the Board was not responsible for assessing the environmental effects of oil production because it lacked authority to regulate those downstream and upstream activities.The opinion is presented here in its entirety, but with citations omitted. If you appreciate this episode, please subscribe. Thank you.
Live from Capital Turnaround in Washington, D.C., Leah, Kate, and Melissa wade right into the swamp, breaking down the (very weird, very disturbing) sexual harassment claims against Texas's ex-solicitor general, Judd Stone and holding their noses to read Coach Brett Kavanaugh's opinion on the National Environmental Policy Act. Then, the hosts welcome special guests Ambassador Norm Eisen and Emily Amick, author of the Substack, Emily in Your Phone, to talk about the avalanche of litigation against the Trump administration and reproductive rights (and wrongs), respectively.Hosts' favorite things:Leah: Taylor Swift's letter about buying back her art; Why Is This Supreme Court Handing Trump More and More Power?, Kate Shaw (NYT); Living by the Ipse Dixit, Steve Vladeck (One First); The New Dark Age, Adam Serwer (The Atlantic); Elon Musk's Legacy Is Disease, Starvation and Death, Michelle Goldberg (NYT)Kate: Beware: We Are Entering a New Phase of the Trump Era, M. Gessen (NYT), How YOU Helped Knock Musk Out of DC–& of Politics, Norm Eisen (Substack); On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama, Kirsten Grind and Meghan Twohey (NYT); Cowboy CarterMelissa: Her incredible shoes from the show; seeing Cowboy Carter; the newest season of Just Like That; Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex ThompsonEmily: Nine Perfect Strangers (Hulu); Everyone Is Lying to You by Jo Piazza Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025! 6/12 – NYC10/4 – ChicagoLearn more: http://crooked.com/eventsOrder your copy of Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad VibesFollow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky
On Thursday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that federal agencies can conduct narrow environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act for projects they are considering permitting. POLITICO's Alex Guillén breaks down the details of the decision and how it will impact legal challenges by environmental groups and Donald Trump's anti-regulatory agenda. Plus, Tesla and Elon Musk have criticized the Republican megabill for gutting the clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act. Alex Guillén is an energy reporter for POLITICO Pro. Nirmal Mulaikal is the co-host and producer of POLITICO Energy. Alex Keeney is a senior audio producer at POLITICO. Gloria Gonzalez is the deputy energy editor for POLITICO. Matt Daily is the energy editor for POLITICO. For more news on energy and the environment, subscribe to Power Switch, our free evening newsletter: https://www.politico.com/power-switch And for even deeper coverage and analysis, read our Morning Energy newsletter by subscribing to POLITICO Pro: https://subscriber.politicopro.com/newsletter-archive/morning-energy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Our recent SAM Huddle, Thinking Clearly in Uncertain Times, was recorded on April 21, 2025. With tensions around trade and cross-border relations rising, this conversation brought together industry and policy perspectives to delve into how these developments are reshaping the landscape for travel and resort operations throughout North America. This is episode two of our two-part series covering this conversation. The J-1 visa program is facing potential cuts, prompting resorts to diversify recruitment strategies. While the program currently remains viable for the upcoming season, H-2B visas are being considered as a more stable—albeit costlier—alternative. Many resorts are preparing to use both to cover seasonal staffing needs. Plus, efforts to streamline the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA process are also underway, with more responsibility placed on project sponsors to prepare documentation. Staffing shortages at the federal level are causing some delays, leading to increased use of third-party contractors. But, projects that can align with forest health and wildfire mitigation goals may gain added momentum. Speakers: Dave Byrd, Director of Risk and Regulatory Affairs, NSAA Scott Prior, Senior Associate, Environmental and Permitting, SE Group Nate Riccardi, Pabian Law Listen to part 1 of the conversation here.
Century Lithium CEO Bill Willoughby joined Steve Darling from Proactive to provide a comprehensive update on the company's flagship Angel Island Lithium Project, a feasibility-stage development located in Nevada, one of the most resource-rich and mining-friendly jurisdictions in the United States. With growing urgency around the development of a domestic lithium supply chain, driven in part by the White House Executive Order to secure critical minerals essential to the U.S. economy and national security, Century Lithium believes it is strategically positioned to support this federal initiative. The Angel Island project is designed as a single-source mining and production operation for battery-grade lithium carbonate, a material vital for electric vehicles, renewable energy storage, and defense technologies. Dr. Willoughby noted that the company recently held a productive meeting with the Nevada State Office of the Bureau of Land Management to assess the permitting progress for the Angel Island project, in light of the federal directive. The meeting also addressed the current status of environmental studies, which are essential for progressing the project's regulatory approvals. The next steps at the federal level include will include completion and final approval of all baseline environmental studies, preparation and submission of the Mine Plan of Operations, and then the BLM will determine the level of review required under the National Environmental Policy Act —either an Environmental Assessment or a more comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement. Angel Island is designed to be a fully integrated lithium operation, capable of producing an average of 34,000 tonnes per year of high-purity lithium carbonate over an estimated 40-year mine life. This end-to-end capability would make Angel Island a cornerstone contributor to the U.S. EV battery supply chain, reducing reliance on overseas processing and mitigating geopolitical risks associated with foreign supply. #proactiveinvestors #centurylithiumcorp #tsxv #lce #otcqx #cydvf #mining #oricaspecialtymining #CenturyLithium #BatteryMetals #USMining #EnergyTransition #EVs #MiningNews #LithiumProject #Tonopah #CriticalMinerals #PilotPlant #NEPA #BLM #CleanEnergy
The Trump administration is pushing for more logging on public land, pledging to boost America’s domestic supply of wood products and increase wildfire resilience. In March, the President issued an executive order directing federal agencies to begin finding ways to expand timber production by 25% over the next few years. Last week, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins sent a memo establishing an “emergency situation determination” covering more than 112 million national forest acres. That includes five national forests in Washington state. Rollins identified these acres as having either high wildfire risk or declining forest health – allowing timber harvesting to be fast-tracked through environmental regulations. The USDA boasted the memo would “increase timber outputs, simplify permitting, remove National Environmental Policy Act processes” and “reduce implementation and contracting burdens.” Big picture, more than half of the land managed by the U.S. Forest Service is now opening for logging. Soundside spoke with Kristen Boyles from Earthjustice Northwest, Travis Joseph with the American Forest Resource Council, and Tom DeLuca from Oregon State University's College of Forestry to get their thoughts on the recent changes to federal forest management. Guests: Kristen Boyles, managing attorney for Earthjustice Northwest, a non-profit environmental law organization. Travis Joseph, president of the American Forest Resource Council, a trade association representing those who work with public timber in the Western United States. Thomas DeLuca, dean of the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. Related links: Trump proposed cutting the Northwest’s national forests. So what happens next? | The Seattle Times National forests face less protections, more logging, Trump admin says Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Debbie is a hardrock mining policy expert with over 30 years of hands-on expertise with the environmental and public land laws and regulations pertaining to mineral exploration and mine development.She provides environmental permitting and government relations consulting services to mineral exploration and mining clients. She has a proven track record of successfully representing clients in legislative and administrative issues on the state and federal levels and in securing project permits for exploration and mining projects.Since 1993, she has been an active participant in the legislative dialogue to change the U.S. Mining Law. She has provided testimonies at Congressional hearings on the National Environmental Policy Act, on abandoned mine policies, and the state and federal environmental regulatory framework applicable to modern mines. Most recently, she testified on behalf of the Women's Mining Coalition in July 2021 and May 2022 before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources at hearings on the U.S. Mining Law.Her legislative work in Nevada includes playing a key role in repealing a special state tax on federal mining claims, helping persuade legislators to abandon a legislative proposal to tax minerals prior to severance, and convincing legislators not to raise the tax rate on mineral, oil and gas, and geothermal energy production.She is also one of the founders of the Women's Mining Coalition and currently serves on the Coalition's Board of Directors. She is a Certified Professional Geologist with the American Institute of Professional Geologists. Her professional memberships include the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America; the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, Inc.; and the Geological Society of Nevada. She has served twice as a trustee of the Northwest Mining Association (now the American Exploration & Mining Association).
Fare enforcement starts on King County Metro buses, Washington leads a coalition to defend the National Environmental Policy Act, and Cornish College starts a new chapter with hundreds of layoffs this Spring. It’s our daily roundup of top stories from the KUOW newsroom, with host Patricia Murphy. We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. You have the power! Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/donate/seattlenow And we want to hear from you! Follow us on Instagram at SeattleNowPod, or leave us feedback online: https://www.kuow.org/feedback See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Trump Administration has made quick work dismantling aspects of the federal government it calls wasteful or inefficient. Caught up in those cuts is the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the federal government to take environmental impacts into consideration.
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The Trump Administration has taken a large whack at the National Environmental Policy Act (often better known by its acronym, NEPA). NEPA is the federal environmental law that requires that the federal government understand and acknowledge the environmental impacts of its actions and provide an opportunity for public engagement on projects. While a bedrock federal environmental law, the law itself is vaguely worded. Thus, implementing regulations (issued by the Council on Environmental Quality in 1978) have been important to its application. Through these regulations, we have NEPA as we know it—"major federal projects" and "cumulative impact analysis" and so on. All that changed on January 20th. Through Executive Order, Trump revoked the authority of the Council on Environmental Quality to issue regulations and the agency has withdrawn the long-standing rules. Now we are in a legal limbo: NEPA still exists (Trump can't veto a law that has already been approved) but the rules implementing NEPA are gone. What are we to do?Jan Hasselman of Earthjustice and Melodie Meyer of EPIC join the program to discuss this major turning point in federal environmental law. Support the show
The thousands of homes that burned in Los Angeles this January included the home of Marketplace Morning Report Host David Brancaccio. He shares what he's learning about the challenges of rebuilding with a limited supply and huge demand for contractors. David says there's an opportunity to rebuild a more wildfire-resistant Altadena, and to heal the community itself. Also, sea otters were hunted out from Oregon and Northern California more than a century ago amid the fur trade, but the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians and conservation partners are now working to bring them back. How reintroducing sea otters can help revive the kelp ecosystem and restore a vital cultural connection for Native people. And major fossil fuel projects like LNG terminals could become harder to oppose on environmental grounds because of a Trump executive order that tries to weaken agency compliance with NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act. Environmental concerns may take a backseat under the new project review process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
President Donald Trump is fundamentally changing how the federal government conducts environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, a landmark law enacted in 1970. Hannah Northey from POLITICO's E&E News breaks down why the president is changing this review process, what he is replacing it with and how this could impact America's environment. Plus, a bill that would require major oil companies to pay fees to cover climate damages based on their past emissions has been reintroduced in California. Hannah Northey covers the nexus of mining, environmental policy and politics for POLITICO's E&E News. Nirmal Mulaikal is a POLITICO audio host-producer. Annie Rees is the managing producer for audio at POLITICO. Alex Keeney is a senior audio producer at POLITICO. Gloria Gonzalez is the deputy energy editor for POLITICO. Matt Daily is the energy editor for POLITICO. For more news on energy and the environment, subscribe to Power Switch, our free evening newsletter: https://www.politico.com/power-switch And for even deeper coverage and analysis, read our Morning Energy newsletter by subscribing to POLITICO Pro: https://subscriber.politicopro.com/newsletter-archive/morning-energy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Energy, transportation, housing — pro-growth advocates from Washington to Silicon Valley are calling for a revival of American infrastructure. They say, “It's time to build.”One massive problem, however: decades of environmental regulation, such as the National Environmental Policy Act, have slowed these efforts to a snail's pace, if not halted them altogether.Today on Political Economy, I talk with James Coleman about the kinds of policy reforms need before we can build.Coleman is a nonresident senior fellow here at AEI. Concurrently, he is also a scholar of energy law at the University of Minnesota, where he specializes in North American energy infrastructure, transport, and trade. He previously taught law at Southern Methodist University, the University of Calgary, and Harvard Law School.
Today, we're diving into everyone's favorite Statecraft topic: administrative law! The two court cases we're discussing could have huge ramifications for how we build things in America.We brought three of our favorite administrative law professors together: James Coleman is a professor at the University of Minnesota, Adam White is the Executive Director of the Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University, and Nicholas Bagley is a professor at the University of Michigan and was Chief General Counsel to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.We discussed:* Why the National Environmental Policy Act is a problem* How a small White House office grew to wield power Congress never gave it* Why a seemingly simple environmental case has thrown environmental regulations into doubt* Why D.C. appellate lawyers don't challenge laws they believe are wrong* The potential for reforming environmental review This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
On this episode of Free Range, host Mike Livermore is joined by Natalie Jacewicz, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. Livermore and Jacewicz discuss here forthcoming paper, "Crafting a New Conservationism." In that paper, Jacewicz examines a fundamental tension in environmental law: the conflict between protecting ecological collectives like species and ecosystems, and safeguarding individual animals. Through analysis of over one hundred National Environmental Policy Act documents, she reveals how federal agencies navigate competing mandates when implementing wildlife management programs. The discussion explores how marquee conservation statutes, including the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act, contain dual commitments to both collective and individual animal protection, yet provide little guidance for resolving conflicts between these goals. Jacewicz identifies systematic inconsistencies in how agencies approach these tensions, ranging from complete disregard for individual animals to positive duties of care. The conversation concludes by examining potential frameworks for incorporating animal welfare concerns into conservation policy more systematically.
QUESTION PRESENTED:Whether the National Environmental Policy Act requires an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the proximate effects of the action over which the agency has regulatory authority. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
On July 17, 2024, the White House Council on Environmental Quality released a landmark report on new digital tools for modernizing infrastructure permitting and environmental review. The report, which was mandated by the Fiscal Responsibility Act, builds on efforts of the Trump administration to modernize permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act. The report tackles the obstacles created by the lack of transparency in the federal permitting process which needlessly increases the risk to investors while obscuring accountability in the democratic process.Harmonizing and expanding data collection by agencies and making that data publicly accessible in a central repository has been a bipartisan commitment of Congress and presidents going back to the administration of George W. Bush. This report is an important step forward in that effort.During this event, our panel of experts will expound on the necessity of these changes, what the new digital tools add to the permitting process, and what we can expect from the permitting process going forward. Listen to other Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcasts Sign up for The Agenda newsletter — the lowdown on top issues conservatives need to know about each week: https://www.heritage.org/agenda
This week, Supreme Court justices heard arguments in a case that could limit how much federal agencies can consider the climate impacts of new infrastructure projects. POLITICO's Alex Guillén breaks down the details of the case and how the eventual ruling could dramatically transform the National Environmental Policy Act. Plus, President-elect Donald Trump is promising that anyone who invests at least $1 billion in the United States will be rewarded with expedited permits and environmental approvals. Alex Guillén is an energy reporter for POLITICO Pro. Nirmal Mulaikal is a POLITICO audio host-producer. Annie Rees is the managing producer for audio at POLITICO. Gloria Gonzalez is the deputy energy editor for POLITICO. Matt Daily is the energy editor for POLITICO. For more news on energy and the environment, subscribe to Power Switch, our free evening newsletter: https://www.politico.com/power-switch And for even deeper coverage and analysis, read our Morning Energy newsletter by subscribing to POLITICO Pro: https://subscriber.politicopro.com/newsletter-archive/morning-energy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A case in which the Court will decide whether the National Environmental Policy Act requires an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the proximate effects of the action over which the agency has regulatory authority.
Environmental Law: Does the National Environmental Policy Act require an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the proximate effects of the action over which the agency has regulatory authority? - Argued: Tue, 10 Dec 2024 15:45:21 EDT
After touching on some shenanigans from the Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention and Chuck Schumer's lousy deal on judicial appointments, Leah, Kate, and Melissa preview December's upcoming Supreme Court cases. The Justices will hear arguments in cases about gender-affirming care for minors, the FDA's denial of authorization to flavored e-cigarettes, and the National Environmental Policy Act. Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky
Each month, a panel of constitutional experts convenes to discuss the Court’s upcoming docket sitting by sitting. The cases covered in this preview are listed below. Food and Drug Administration v. Wages and White Lion Investments, LLC (December 2) - Federalism & Separation of Powers; Issue(s): Whether the court of appeals erred in setting aside the Food and Drug Administration’s orders denying respondents’ applications for authorization to market new e-cigarette products as arbitrary and capricious. U.S. v. Miller (December 2) - Bankruptcy; Issue(s): Whether a bankruptcy trustee may avoid a debtor’s tax payment to the United States under 11 U.S.C. § 544(b) when no actual creditor could have obtained relief under the applicable state fraudulent-transfer law outside of bankruptcy. Republic of Hungary v. Simon (December 3) - International Law & Financial Services; Issue(s): (1) Whether historical commingling of assets suffices to establish that proceeds of seized property have a commercial nexus with the United States under the expropriation exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act; (2) whether a plaintiff must make out a valid claim that an exception to the FSIA applies at the pleading stage, rather than merely raising a plausible inference; and (3) whether a sovereign defendant bears the burden of producing evidence to affirmatively disprove that the proceeds of property taken in violation of international law have a commercial nexus with the United States under the expropriation exception to the FSIA. U.S. v. Skrmetti (December 4) - Federalism & Separation of Powers& SOGI; Issue(s): Whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1, which prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity,” violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Kousisis v. U.S. (December 9) - Environmental Law & Financial Services; Issue(s): (1) Whether deception to induce a commercial exchange can constitute mail or wire fraud, even if inflicting economic harm on the alleged victim was not the object of the scheme; (2) whether a sovereign’s statutory, regulatory, or policy interest is a property interest when compliance is a material term of payment for goods or services; and (3) whether all contract rights are “property.” Feliciano v. Department of Transportation (December 9) - Federal Employment Law; Issue(s): Whether a federal civilian employee called or ordered to active duty under a provision of law during a national emergency is entitled to differential pay even if the duty is not directly connected to the national emergency. Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado (December 10) - Environmental Law & Financial Services; Issue(s): Whether the National Environmental Policy Act requires an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the proximate effects of the action over which the agency has regulatory authority. Dewberry Group v. Dewberry Engineers (December 11) - Civil Procedure; Issue(s): Whether an award of the “defendant’s profits” under the Lanham Act can include an order for the defendant to disgorge the distinct profits of legally separate non-party corporate affiliates. Featuring: Boyd Garriott, Associate, Wiley Rein LLP Eric N. Kniffin, Attorney, Kniffin Law PLLC, Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center Michael Pepson, Regulatory Counsel, Americans for Prosperity Foundation Alexandra Shapiro, Partner, Shapiro Arato Bach LLP Jeff Stier, Senior Fellow, Consumer Choice Center (Moderator) Tessa Shurr, Committee Staff, U.S. House of Representatives
In this episode, host Megan Berge talks to long time NEPA practitioner Tom Jackson about the D.C. Circuit's recent decision shaking the foundation of National Environmental Policy Act regulations across federal agencies. The decision is available here. Please reach out to Tom if you have questions about the decision's potential impact on current or planned projects or funding requests.
Acts, Violations and Strategies in Agriculture Johne's Disease in Cattle Demand and Consumption of Animal Protein 00:01:05 – Acts, Violations and Strategies in Agriculture: Roger McEowen, K-State and Washburn law professor, starts today's show by explaining the FARM Act, a National Environmental Policy Act violation and the Environmental Protection Administration's draft strategy. Kansas Income Tax Institute Roger on AgManager.info 00:12:05 – Johne's Disease in Cattle: Continuing the show is K-State veterinarian, Gregg Hanzlicek, as he discusses Johne's disease in cattle and how producers can help reduce risk of it in their herd. Johne's Disease: No Longer Just a Dairy Disease johnes.org ksvdl.org 00:23:05 – Demand and Consumption of Animal Protein: A portion of the Beef Cattle Institute's Cattle Chat podcast ends today's show as Brad White, Dustin Pendell, Bob Larson, Brian Lubbers, Phillip Lancaster and Ken Odde converse about meat demand and consumption. BCI Cattle Chat Podcast Bovine Science with BCI Podcast Email BCI at bci@ksu.edu Send comments, questions or requests for copies of past programs to ksrenews@ksu.edu. Agriculture Today is a daily program featuring Kansas State University agricultural specialists and other experts examining ag issues facing Kansas and the nation. It is hosted by Shelby Varner and distributed to radio stations throughout Kansas and as a daily podcast. K‑State Research and Extension is a short name for the Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service, a program designed to generate and distribute useful knowledge for the well‑being of Kansans. Supported by county, state, federal and private funds, the program has county Extension offices, experiment fields, area Extension offices and regional research centers statewide. Its headquarters is on the K‑State campus in Manhattan
On Monday, September 30th, United States District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ruled that the Department of Energy (DOE) and its National Nuclear Secrurity Administration (NNSA) violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) because the federal agencies failed to take a “hard look” at the alternatives to fabricate plutonium pits, or the triggers, for nuclear weapons at two of its sites. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was created to design and fabricate the atomic bombs used during World War II. The Savannah River Site in South Carolina has never fabricated pits for nuclear weapons --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ccnsupdate/support
The Virginia Department of Transportation will hold a public hearing Oct. 29 to discuss proposed improvements to the Short Pump area transportation network. The meeting will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Wingate by Wyndham-Short Pump, located at 13991 North Gayton Road. The proposed improvements project includes sections of I-64, I-295, Route 288, and US 250 in Henrico and Goochland counties. VDOT is conducting the study on behalf of Henrico County and in coordination with the Federal Highway Administration to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. The public hearing will be held in...Article LinkSupport the show
The Virginia Department of Transportation will hold a public hearing Oct. 29 to discuss proposed improvements to the Short Pump area transportation network. The meeting will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Wingate by Wyndham-Short Pump, located at 13991 North Gayton Road. The proposed improvements project includes sections of I-64, I-295, Route 288, and US 250 in Henrico and Goochland counties. VDOT is conducting the study on behalf of Henrico County and in coordination with the Federal Highway Administration to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. The public hearing will be held in...Article LinkSupport the show
We're making it easy for you to judge the job performances of your members of Congress! In this episode, Jen tells you about a list of single issue votes that were taken in the House and Senate during the 118th Congress. Most importantly, we gave you all the information you need to find your members' voting records in this episode's show notes. You can find your 2024 Congressional Election Study guide in the episode 301 show notes on www.congressionaldish.com. Happy voting! Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Contribute monthly or a lump sum via Support Congressional Dish via (donations per episode) Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank's online bill pay function to mail contributions to: Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Enacted Laws Congressional Dish Episode: ← find how your Representative voted here ← find how your Senator voted here Effects of H.R. 7888: Expands the number of people allowed to be legally spied on by the U.S. government and the number of people with information stored in the FISA database (which has information about Americans whose data has been collected along with information about foreigners). It does so by… Giving the Department of Justice (DOJ) permission to search the FISA database to vet foreigners who are applying for tourist visas to visit the United States and Expanding the definition of ‘foreign intelligence' to include counter narcotics targets. Expands the number of companies who get legal immunity for turning our information over to the government by expanding the definition of “electronic communications service provider”. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is no longer legally allowed to search the FISA database solely to find evidence of a crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is prohibited from using uncorroborated information from political groups or anonymous sources in press reports to get FISA warrants. Limits the number of people within the government who are allowed to search through the database. Background Sources for H.R. 7888: INTEL.gov. Michael Horowitz. April 27, 2023. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General. Jonathan Turley. December 14, 2019. The Hill. Conor Clarke. February 2014. Stanford Law Review. “The Biggs Amendment” to H.R. 7888 [failed] ← find how your Representative voted here Intended Effect of the Biggs Amendment: Would require U.S. government officials to get a warrant before searching through the FISA database for information about U.S. citizens or companies, with emergency exceptions. Congressional Dish Episode: ← find how your Representative voted here Effects of H.R. 7521: It is now illegal for companies to provide internet hosting services, distribute, and/or update “foreign adversary controlled applications”, websites, or games, which are partially owned by a foreign person and are determined by the President - with no proof required - to pose “a significant threat to the national security of the United States.” Establishes a process that allows companies to host, distribute, and/or update if the app, website, or game changes ownership. If companies host, distribute, and/or update the targeted apps, websites, or games, the companies are subject to fines that - depending on the user base of the targeted app, website, or game - can be hundreds of billions of dollars. ← find how your Representative voted here Intended Effects of H.R. 8034: Provide almost $26 billion to Israel. 64% of the money would be for war expenses 35% of the money would be for humanitarian purposes Less than 1% of the money would be for diplomatic expenses Provide $400 million for FEMA Background Sources for H.R. 8034: April 17, 2024. Al Jazeera. Fatima Al-Kassab. January 26, 2024. NPR. ← find how your Representative voted here Intended Effects of H.R. 8035: Provide over $60 billion for Ukraine (and other neighboring countries) 83% of the money would be for war expenses 16.5% of the money would be for humanitarian expenses Less than 0.5% of the money would be for diplomatic expenses Provide $341 million for production of nuclear weapons materials and nuclear nonproliferation programs House Bills ← find how your Representative voted here Intended Effects of H.R. 7023: Double the length of permits to discharge pollutants in waterways from 5 years to 10 years Removes the EPA administrators ability to prohibit discharges in specific disposal sites if he determines that the discharge of materials will have an unacceptable adverse effect on municipal water supplies, shellfish beds and fishery areas, wildlife, or recreational areas after a disposal permit has been issued. Creates nationwide permits to allow for transmission projects for people, water, wastewater, carbon dioxide, fuel, and oil and gas pipelines that do not result in a “loss greater than 1/2 acre of waters of the United States for each single and complete project” In reissuing these nationwide permits, the EPA would not be required to consult with a state nor any other Federal agency and these permits will get to short cut environmental assessments that are required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Limits judicial review Puts a 60 day time limit after the permit is issued for a judicial review Doesn't allow anyone who didn't file a comment during the public comment period to file a lawsuit. If someone did file a comment, they may not file a lawsuit about anything that they didn't address in their comment. Prohibits the court from vacating, revoking, or limiting the permit unless the court finds that the activities authorized “present an imminent and substantial danger to human health or the environment for which there is not other equitable remedy available under the law' Approves an end-of-Trump administration EPA approval for Florida to administer Clean Water Act permitting. Background Sources for H.R. 7023: Becky Bohrer and Patrick Whittle. January 31, 2023. PBS News. July 19, 2016. Earthjustice. Earthjustice. ← find how your Representative voted here Intended Effects of H.R. 1435: Prohibit states from banning fossil fuel burning internal combustion engines in cars and trucks. Effectively revokes the EPA waiver that allows California to ban the sale of fossil fuel burning cars. Background Sources for H.R. 1435: Jeff St. John. September 23, 2020. Greentech Media. ← find how your Representative voted here Intended effects of H.R. 7176: Give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission the “exclusive authority” to approve or deny applications to export natural gas from the United States to a foreign country, which eliminates requirements for Department of Energy approval and provisions to address free trade agreements. Deems exportation or importation of natural gas to be in the public interest. Background Sources for H.R. 7176: September 26, 2024. National Drought Mitigation Center. Zachary-Taylor Wright. September 17, 2024. MySA. Steven Santana. July 23, 2024. MySA. ← find how your Representative voted here Intended Effects of H.R. 6543: Requires providers of short term lodging (hotels and AirBnBs) and Internet platforms that advertise and sell short term lodging to display the total price including all mandatory fees, except for government taxes and fees. ← find how your Representative voted here Intended Effects of H.R. 3950: Requires ticket issuers and secondary market ticket issuers to clearly display the total ticket price, including all fees, at the time the ticket price is first displayed and provides an itemized list of charges before the ticket purchasing process is complete. Prohibits ticket issuers and secondary market ticket issuers from selling tickets that they do not physically possess at the time of sale. Prohibits secondary ticket issuers from using the word ‘official' or similar words implying a partnership in their marketing and search engine wording unless they have the consent of the venue, team, or artist. Requires ticket issuers to provide a refund or a similar ticket to a rescheduled event, with the approval of the customer, if an event is canceled or postponed (except for in case of a natural disaster or other event beyond the ticket issuer's control). ← find how your Representative voted here Intended Effects of H.R. 4639: Prohibits law enforcement or the intelligence community from buying customer or subscriber information directly from companies or from data brokers. Any information “illegitimately obtained” is not allowed to be used against us in court. Has exceptions for FISA surveillance of foreigners. Limits immunity for companies that comply with surveillance orders and do not stop the surveillance when a court order is denied. Background Sources for H.R. 4639: Carly Page. July 18, 2022. TechCrunch. Senior Advisory Group Panel on Commercially Available Information. January 27, 2022. Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Byron Tau. June 19, 2020. The Wall Street Journal. Senate Bills ← find how your Senator voted here Intended Effects of S. 316: Repeal the authorizations for US military operations in Iraq that were passed in 1991 and 2002. Background Sources for S. 316: Meghann Myers. January 25, 2024. Military Times. ← find how your Senator voted here Intended Effects of S. 4072: To prevent the enforcement of the , which would set stricter standards for fossil fuel burning cars and trucks that would be phased in between model year 2027 and 2032. Prohibits enforcement of any similar rule that could be written in the future. The standards could be met via the production of cleaner fossil fuel powered vehicles, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric vehicles. EPA estimates the air pollution reductions would provide ~$13 billion in reduced annual health care costs by preventing the emission of thousands of tons of particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds. EPA estimates the new standards would save Americans $46 billion per year in fuel costs and $16 billion per year due to reduced maintenance and repair costs for drivers, totaling ~$6,000 over the course of a new vehicle's lifetime. ← find how your Senator voted here Intended Effects of S. 4445: Guarantees an individual's rights to receive fertility treatment, make decisions regarding the donation, use, storage, and disposal of oocytes, sperm, fertilized eggs and embryos, and enter contracts with health care providers to enact those decisions. Guarantees a health provider's right to provide fertility treatments and provide for testing, use, storage, shipping, and disposal of genetic material including oocytes, sperm, fertilized eggs, and embryos. Guarantees a health insurance provider's right to cover fertility treatments. Guarantees a manufacturer's right to manufacture, import, market, sell, and distribute drugs and devices that are used for fertility treatments. Allows lawsuits against any State or individual who interferes with the right to fertility treatments by the Attorney General, health care providers, and individuals adversely affected. This would supersede any State law regardless of when it was enacted and prohibits enforcement of any state law that is in conflict with these rights. Requires the Department of Defense to provide fertility treatments (specifically three egg retrievals and unlimited embryo transfers) to active duty military members and their spouses. Requires health plans, Medicaid, and Medicare that cover obstetrical (child birth related) services to also provide coverage for fertility treatments. Background sources for S. 4445: Maya C. Miller. September 17, 2024. The New York Times. Alander Rocha. April 3, 2024. Alabama Reflector. Alander Rocha. February 19, 2024. Alabama Reflector. Audio Sources March 21, 2024 Clips Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA): My colleagues have criticized EPA's use of its Clean Water Act review or veto authority. Yet, the record shows EPA's use of this authority has been consistent with congressional intent. I see no reason for removing this authority. Since enactment of the Clean Water Act in 1972, EPA has only exercised this authority 14 times—most recently in relation to large-scale mining proposals in Alaska and West Virginia. EPA's use of this authority has, in fact, been bipartisan. EPA used it 2 times during Democratic administrations and 12 times during Republican administrations. Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO): This bill will cut red tape, strengthen the permitting process in favor of those seeking the permits, provide clarity to the EPA to ensure that they are following what the law intends, and, most importantly, fight back against the militant climate agenda. Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO): Our court system is already being attacked from every angle. Let's not let the environmentalists continue to manipulate the courts to push their climate religion. It should be an efficient and speedy process so businesses can build the infrastructure that our country depends on. Rep. David Rouser (R-NC): Mr. Chairman, in closing, I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this bill, which provides energy predictability and certainty that our utilities, energy, manufacturing, and agricultural industries need to succeed, which are so critical to American greatness in energy, food production, and the manufacturing necessary to improve the standard of living of every American. That is what this is about, Mr. Chairman. Music by Editing Production Assistance
The Biden administration released new permitting rules this week that aim to speed up the building of energy infrastructure while also giving communities more input. But the regulations are already facing pushback and larger permitting priorities remain unaddressed by Congress. POLITICO's Zack Colman breaks down how big of an impact Biden's permitting regulations could have and the issues that remain. Plus, the Interior Department is taking another step toward auctioning offshore wind leases off the coast of Oregon and in the Gulf of Maine. For more news on energy and the environment, subscribe to Power Switch, our free evening newsletter: https://www.politico.com/power-switch And for even deeper coverage and analysis, read our Morning Energy newsletter by subscribing to POLITICO Pro: https://subscriber.politicopro.com/newsletter-archive/morning-energy Zack Colman covers climate change for POLITICO. Catherine Morehouse is an energy reporter for POLITICO. Nirmal Mulaikal is a POLITICO audio host-producer. Annie Rees is a senior audio producer-host at POLITICO. Gloria Gonzalez is the deputy energy editor for POLITICO. Matt Daily is the energy editor for POLITICO.
House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands Legislative Hearing on Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman),To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes | Federal Lands Subcommittee Wednesday, April 17, 2024 | 10:00 AM On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, at 10:00 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold a legislative hearing on the following bill: Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman), To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes. Witnesses Panel I (Administration Officials): Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief of the National Forest System U.S. Forest Service Washington, D.C. Panel II (Outside Experts): Mr. Cody Desautel President Intertribal Timber Council, & Executive Director Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation Nespelem, Washington Ms. Hannah Downey Policy Director Property and Environment Research Center Bozeman, Montana Mr. Jim Parma Eastern Fiber Manager Bell Lumber and Pole New Brighton, Minnesota Dr. Kimiko Barrett Wildfire Research and Policy Lead Headwaters Economics Bozeman, Montana [Minority Witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=415848
House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands Legislative Hearing on Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman),To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes | Federal Lands Subcommittee Wednesday, April 17, 2024 | 10:00 AM On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, at 10:00 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold a legislative hearing on the following bill: Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman), To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes. Witnesses Panel I (Administration Officials): Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief of the National Forest System U.S. Forest Service Washington, D.C. Panel II (Outside Experts): Mr. Cody Desautel President Intertribal Timber Council, & Executive Director Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation Nespelem, Washington Ms. Hannah Downey Policy Director Property and Environment Research Center Bozeman, Montana Mr. Jim Parma Eastern Fiber Manager Bell Lumber and Pole New Brighton, Minnesota Dr. Kimiko Barrett Wildfire Research and Policy Lead Headwaters Economics Bozeman, Montana [Minority Witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=415848
House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands Legislative Hearing on Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman),To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes | Federal Lands Subcommittee Wednesday, April 17, 2024 | 10:00 AM On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, at 10:00 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold a legislative hearing on the following bill: Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman), To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes. Witnesses Panel I (Administration Officials): Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief of the National Forest System U.S. Forest Service Washington, D.C. Panel II (Outside Experts): Mr. Cody Desautel President Intertribal Timber Council, & Executive Director Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation Nespelem, Washington Ms. Hannah Downey Policy Director Property and Environment Research Center Bozeman, Montana Mr. Jim Parma Eastern Fiber Manager Bell Lumber and Pole New Brighton, Minnesota Dr. Kimiko Barrett Wildfire Research and Policy Lead Headwaters Economics Bozeman, Montana [Minority Witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=415848
House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands Legislative Hearing on Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman),To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes | Federal Lands Subcommittee Wednesday, April 17, 2024 | 10:00 AM On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, at 10:00 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold a legislative hearing on the following bill: Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman), To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes. Witnesses Panel I (Administration Officials): Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief of the National Forest System U.S. Forest Service Washington, D.C. Panel II (Outside Experts): Mr. Cody Desautel President Intertribal Timber Council, & Executive Director Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation Nespelem, Washington Ms. Hannah Downey Policy Director Property and Environment Research Center Bozeman, Montana Mr. Jim Parma Eastern Fiber Manager Bell Lumber and Pole New Brighton, Minnesota Dr. Kimiko Barrett Wildfire Research and Policy Lead Headwaters Economics Bozeman, Montana [Minority Witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=415848
House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands Legislative Hearing on Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman),To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes | Federal Lands Subcommittee Wednesday, April 17, 2024 | 10:00 AM On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, at 10:00 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold a legislative hearing on the following bill: Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman), To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes. Witnesses Panel I (Administration Officials): Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief of the National Forest System U.S. Forest Service Washington, D.C. Panel II (Outside Experts): Mr. Cody Desautel President Intertribal Timber Council, & Executive Director Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation Nespelem, Washington Ms. Hannah Downey Policy Director Property and Environment Research Center Bozeman, Montana Mr. Jim Parma Eastern Fiber Manager Bell Lumber and Pole New Brighton, Minnesota Dr. Kimiko Barrett Wildfire Research and Policy Lead Headwaters Economics Bozeman, Montana [Minority Witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=415848
House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands Legislative Hearing on Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman),To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes | Federal Lands Subcommittee Wednesday, April 17, 2024 | 10:00 AM On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, at 10:00 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold a legislative hearing on the following bill: Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman), To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes. Witnesses Panel I (Administration Officials): Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief of the National Forest System U.S. Forest Service Washington, D.C. Panel II (Outside Experts): Mr. Cody Desautel President Intertribal Timber Council, & Executive Director Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation Nespelem, Washington Ms. Hannah Downey Policy Director Property and Environment Research Center Bozeman, Montana Mr. Jim Parma Eastern Fiber Manager Bell Lumber and Pole New Brighton, Minnesota Dr. Kimiko Barrett Wildfire Research and Policy Lead Headwaters Economics Bozeman, Montana [Minority Witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=415848
House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands Legislative Hearing on Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman),To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes | Federal Lands Subcommittee Wednesday, April 17, 2024 | 10:00 AM On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, at 10:00 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold a legislative hearing on the following bill: Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman), To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes. Witnesses Panel I (Administration Officials): Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief of the National Forest System U.S. Forest Service Washington, D.C. Panel II (Outside Experts): Mr. Cody Desautel President Intertribal Timber Council, & Executive Director Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation Nespelem, Washington Ms. Hannah Downey Policy Director Property and Environment Research Center Bozeman, Montana Mr. Jim Parma Eastern Fiber Manager Bell Lumber and Pole New Brighton, Minnesota Dr. Kimiko Barrett Wildfire Research and Policy Lead Headwaters Economics Bozeman, Montana [Minority Witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=415848
House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands Legislative Hearing on Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman),To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes | Federal Lands Subcommittee Wednesday, April 17, 2024 | 10:00 AM On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, at 10:00 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold a legislative hearing on the following bill: Discussion Draft of H.R. ___ (Rep. Westerman), To expedite under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and improve forest management activities on National Forest System lands, on public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and on Tribal lands to return resilience to overgrown, fire-prone forested lands, and for other purposes. Witnesses Panel I (Administration Officials): Mr. Chris French Deputy Chief of the National Forest System U.S. Forest Service Washington, D.C. Panel II (Outside Experts): Mr. Cody Desautel President Intertribal Timber Council, & Executive Director Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation Nespelem, Washington Ms. Hannah Downey Policy Director Property and Environment Research Center Bozeman, Montana Mr. Jim Parma Eastern Fiber Manager Bell Lumber and Pole New Brighton, Minnesota Dr. Kimiko Barrett Wildfire Research and Policy Lead Headwaters Economics Bozeman, Montana [Minority Witness] Committee Notice: https://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=415848
Many of you will have heard of Zvi Mowshowitz as a superhuman information-absorbing-and-processing machine — which he definitely is. As the author of the Substack Don't Worry About the Vase, Zvi has spent as much time as literally anyone in the world over the last two years tracking in detail how the explosion of AI has been playing out — and he has strong opinions about almost every aspect of it. Links to learn more, summary, and full transcript.In today's episode, host Rob Wiblin asks Zvi for his takes on:US-China negotiationsWhether AI progress has stalledThe biggest wins and losses for alignment in 2023EU and White House AI regulationsWhich major AI lab has the best safety strategyThe pros and cons of the Pause AI movementRecent breakthroughs in capabilitiesIn what situations it's morally acceptable to work at AI labsWhether you agree or disagree with his views, Zvi is super informed and brimming with concrete details.Zvi and Rob also talk about:The risk of AI labs fooling themselves into believing their alignment plans are working when they may not be.The “sleeper agent” issue uncovered in a recent Anthropic paper, and how it shows us how hard alignment actually is.Why Zvi disagrees with 80,000 Hours' advice about gaining career capital to have a positive impact.Zvi's project to identify the most strikingly horrible and neglected policy failures in the US, and how Zvi founded a new think tank (Balsa Research) to identify innovative solutions to overthrow the horrible status quo in areas like domestic shipping, environmental reviews, and housing supply.Why Zvi thinks that improving people's prosperity and housing can make them care more about existential risks like AI.An idea from the online rationality community that Zvi thinks is really underrated and more people should have heard of: simulacra levels.And plenty more.Chapters:Zvi's AI-related worldview (00:03:41)Sleeper agents (00:05:55)Safety plans of the three major labs (00:21:47)Misalignment vs misuse vs structural issues (00:50:00)Should concerned people work at AI labs? (00:55:45)Pause AI campaign (01:30:16)Has progress on useful AI products stalled? (01:38:03)White House executive order and US politics (01:42:09)Reasons for AI policy optimism (01:56:38)Zvi's day-to-day (02:09:47)Big wins and losses on safety and alignment in 2023 (02:12:29)Other unappreciated technical breakthroughs (02:17:54)Concrete things we can do to mitigate risks (02:31:19)Balsa Research and the Jones Act (02:34:40)The National Environmental Policy Act (02:50:36)Housing policy (02:59:59)Underrated rationalist worldviews (03:16:22)Producer and editor: Keiran HarrisAudio Engineering Lead: Ben CordellTechnical editing: Simon Monsour, Milo McGuire, and Dominic ArmstrongTranscriptions and additional content editing: Katy Moore
In a remote part of Nevada, an energy company is trying to build a climate-friendly power plant—but the plant is being blocked by conservationists and a decades old environmental law. A geothermal plant built atop desert hot springs sits half-completed after the discovery of a new toad species in the area, and an environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. Conservation groups are suing, arguing the plant could drive the toad to extinction. But that seemingly puts them at odds with clean energy advocates in the fight against climate change. Bloomberg Law's Daniel Moore and Andrew Satter visited the site and join our podcast, On The Merits. They discuss the plant, the toad, NEPA, and why these "green-on-green" fights could become common as renewable energy projects expand. Do you have feedback on this episode of On The Merits? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.
Friday News Flyover, January 19, 2024Oil train delayed | Abortion rights advocates speak with Senators | Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and GOP-dominated legislature's priorities | and OH Sen. Sherrod Brown and MO Rep. Jason Smith make big bi-partisan deal on Child Tax CreditIf you're new to our shows make sure you subscribe and leave a 5 star rating wherever you listen. You can also find Heartland POD content on Youtube and on social media @ THE heartland pod, and learn more at thehearltandcollective.com This train is not leaving the stationForest Service withdraws key permit for controversial Utah oil-train project opposed by ColoradansProject would dramatically increase hazardous shipments through Colorado communitiesBY: CHASE WOODRUFF - JANUARY 18, 2024 9:18 AMA controversial Utah oil-train proposal opposed by Colorado communities and environmentalists was dealt another blow this week when the U.S. Forest Service withdrew a key permit for the project.In an announcement published Wednesday, Ashley National Forest Supervisor Susan Eickhoff blocked the issuance of a permit to the Uinta Basin Railway to construct 12 miles of railroad track through a protected area of the national forest in northeast Utah. The stretch of track in question is part of the proposed railway's 88-mile connection between the oil fields of eastern Utah's Uinta Basin and the existing national rail network.The project has drawn fierce opposition from Coloradans. A federal “downline analysis” estimated that 90% of the resulting oil-train traffic — as many as five fully loaded, two-mile-long trains of crude oil tankers per day — would be routed through environmentally sensitive and densely populated areas in Colorado, en route to oil refineries on the Gulf Coast. The oil trains would more than quadruple the amount of hazardous materials being shipped by rail through many Colorado counties.Colorado's Eagle County and five environmental groups sued to overturn the Uinta Basin Railway's approval, and in August 2023 a panel of federal judges ruled that the approval process contained “numerous” and “significant” violations of the National Environmental Policy Act. The ruling vacated portions of the project's environmental impact statement and ordered the federal Surface Transportation Board to redo its analysis of key environmental risks.Because the Forest Service's decision in August 2022 to grant a right-of-way permit to the project was based on that flawed analysis, the agency has withdrawn its decision pending further proceedings at the STB.Ted Zukoski, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued to block the project. “This is wonderful news for the roadless forest in Utah's Indian Canyon and the wildlife who call it home. It's a victory for the Colorado River and nearby communities that would be threatened by oil train accidents and spills. If the oil train's backers attempt to revive this dangerous scheme, we'll be there to fight it again.”In a press release, Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, who had urged multiple federal agencies to put a stop to the project, applauded the Forest Service's move.“A derailment along the headwaters of the Colorado River could have catastrophic effects for Colorado's communities, water, and environment. I'm glad the Forest Service has taken this important step to protect the Colorado River and the tens of millions of people who depend on it.”U.S. Senators and Abortion Rights Advocates Discuss State Abortion Access LimitationsBY: JENNIFER SHUTT - JANUARY 17, 2024WASHINGTON — During a Capitol Visitors Center briefing, abortion rights advocates and Democratic U.S. Senators called for reinstating legal and safe abortion access nationwide. The nearly three-hour session featured physicians discussing the difficulties faced in states with restrictive abortion laws following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade.Dr. Austin Dennard, a Texas OB-GYN involved in a lawsuit against the state's abortion laws, spoke about the validity and personal nature of each abortion decision. He highlighted patients' fears about family planning in states with restrictive laws, noting the adverse impact on what should be a joyful life chapter.The briefing preceded the annual anti-abortion March for Life, with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Rep. Chris Smith scheduled to speak. Senate Democrats criticized efforts to limit abortion access and discussed two upcoming Supreme Court cases with significant implications.One case focuses on mifepristone, a key medication in abortion and miscarriage treatments, while the other revolves around the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). The Biden administration argues that EMTALA should protect doctors performing abortions as emergency medical treatment in states with strict anti-abortion laws.Dr. Serina Floyd, a Washington, D.C. OB-GYN and Physicians for Reproductive Health fellow, expressed confusion over Republican efforts to target EMTALA, emphasizing the potential life-saving importance of emergency abortion care. She noted research indicating severe consequences for patients denied abortion access, including health risks, economic hardship, and staying in violent relationships.Dr. Floyd advocated for non-interference from the government in medical decisions, stressing that patients are capable of making informed choices about their health and lives with their healthcare providers.Senator Patty Murray of Washington highlighted her state's influx of abortion patients from restrictive states like Idaho. Murray and other senators at the briefing expressed concern that residents in states with abortion protections might not realize the impact of a potential nationwide abortion ban or Supreme Court decisions.Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan pointed out that even states with constitutional reproductive rights, like Michigan, are not fully shielded from the effects of a national abortion ban. After hearing doctors' testimonies, Stabenow expressed astonishment at the challenges facing both physicians and women needing abortion access, questioning the progress made in women's rights, asking, “is it 2024 or are we back in 1984?”Kansas Legislature Fast-Tracks Tax Reform Opposed by Governor KellyBY: TIM CARPENTER - JANUARY 17, 2024TOPEKA — Kansas Republican legislative leaders are expediting a tax reform bill focusing on income and sales tax changes, including a single-rate state income tax of 5.25%, which Democratic Governor Laura Kelly has threatened to veto.The bill, bypassing regular committee processes, is set for early-session debate in the Senate. The proposed tax overhaul would lead to a state revenue reduction exceeding $1.5 billion over three years, surpassing Governor Kelly's proposed $1 billion cut. The plan to implement a flat tax rate of 5.25%, replacing Kansas' three-rate income tax structure, has been met with opposition from Governor Kelly because it disproportionately benefits the wealthy.The bill also proposes eliminating the state income tax on Social Security benefits, aligning with Kelly's proposal. Additionally, it seeks to remove the state sales tax on groceries starting April 1, advancing the timeline from the previously set January 1, 2025. The measure includes an exemption for the first $100,000 in state property taxes from all Kansas homeowners for school finance purposes, adjustable for inflation.Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins, both Republicans, view the bill as a compromise, claiming it addresses issues faced by retirees and families while tackling inflation.Governor Kelly vetoed two major tax reform bills in 2023, which the Republican-dominated Legislature couldn't override. “We must get that money back into Kansans' pockets — and we will — in a fiscally responsible and targeted way,” Kelly said. “In a way that doesn't threaten progress on all the other issues Kansans care about. Unfortunately, that's exactly what one proposal — the flat tax — would do. ” Kansas' Governor Kelly calls for hearing on Medicaid expansion bill that would cover 150,000 KansansBY: RACHEL MIPRO - JANUARY 17, 2024 2:35 PM TOPEKA — A Medicaid expansion proposal has been enrolled into state House and Senate committees despite continued opposition from top legislative Republicans. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who has spent the months leading up to the legislative session rallying across the state for Medicaid expansion, called for a hearing on the bill by Jan. 29. “It's easy to sum up the Cutting Healthcare Costs for All Kansans Act: health care coverage for 150,000 Kansans, cost savings for everyone else. We protect our rural hospitals, and Kansas taxpayers pay nothing extra,” Kelly said in a Wednesday announcement of the proposal's enrollment. “The legislature should listen to the over 70% of Kansans who support Medicaid Expansion and give this bill a hearing by Kansas Day.” Rep. Vic Miller, D-Topeka, introduced the bill in the House Appropriations Committee and on the Senate side, Sen. Pat Pettey, D- Kansas City, introduced the bill into the Senate Ways and Means Committee. “Medicaid expansion is not only popular, but it saves lives, creates jobs and saves our rural hospitals. Hardworking Kansans shouldn't die because of legislative inaction,” Miller said.Medicaid expansion would unlock $700 million in annual federal funding and could potentially save 59 rural hospitals at risk of closing. Kelly unveiled her latest Medicaid expansion package in December, but Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins remain opposed to expansion, calling the move a way to expand the “welfare state.” Lawmakers last came close to expansion in 2020, when former Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning worked out a bipartisan deal with Kelly. But the deal fell apart as Republicans, outraged by a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, focused on placing a constitutional amendment on abortion before voters instead,Child Tax Credit and Business Incentives Merged in New Tax ProposalBY: ASHLEY MURRAY - JANUARY 16, 2024WASHINGTON — Leading members of Congress released a bipartisan, bicameral tax proposal Tuesday, promising a middle-path deal to help low-income families and provide incentives for businesses as Trump-era tax breaks expire.The framework led by U.S. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri would raise the child tax credit incrementally through 2025 and restore tax relief for affordable housing projects.The three-year proposal would also make exempt disaster payments to wildfire victims and to those who suffered losses after the massive train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Sen. Wyden, chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, said in a statement that “(f)ifteen million kids from low-income families will be better off as a result of this plan, and given today's miserable political climate, it's a big deal to have this opportunity to pass pro-family policy that helps so many kids get ahead.”Democrats have been pushing to permanently raise the tax credit that low-income families receive per child after a temporary increase during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated significant reductions in child poverty. Wyden also praised the deal's potential to spur affordable housing construction and said that his goal “remains to get this passed in time for families and businesses to benefit in this upcoming tax filing season, and I'm going to pull out all the stops to get that done.”Rep. Jason Smith, chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, said “American families will benefit from this bipartisan agreement that provides greater tax relief, strengthens Main Street businesses, boosts our competitiveness with China, and creates jobs.”“We even provide disaster relief and cut red tape for small businesses, while ending a COVID-era program that's costing taxpayers billions in fraud. This legislation locks in over $600 billion in proven pro-growth, pro-America tax policies with key provisions that support over 21 million jobs. I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this legislation,” Smith continued in a statement Tuesday.And for those who file 1099 forms, a provision tucked away in the framework would increase the threshold to file to $1,000 from the current $600.The proposal won praise from across the tax policy spectrum.Business Roundtable, an advocacy organization representing a wide range of U.S. CEOs, described the deal's pitch to revive expired pro-business policies as “critical to strengthening America's global competitiveness.”Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat and key supporter of the child tax credit, urged his colleagues to pass the deal, calling it a “win-win for Ohio families and Ohio manufacturers.”Sen. Brown said, “The deal's expansion of the Child Tax Credit will help parents keep up with the rising cost of living and ensure that their hard work pays off. The business provisions will support American companies that invest in our nation's research and manufacturing. The deal also ensures that residents of East Palestine won't get hit with a surprise tax bill for payments they received from Norfolk Southern after last year's derailment.”Pretty, pret-ty good. Welp that's it for me, from Denver I'm Sean Diller. Stories in today's show can be found in the Missouri Independent, Ohio Capital Journal, Kansas Reflector and Michigan Advance. Thanks for listening, see you next time. @TheHeartlandPOD on Twitter and ThreadsCo-HostsAdam Sommer @Adam_Sommer85 (Twitter) @adam_sommer85 (Post)Rachel Parker @msraitchetp (Post) Sean Diller (no social)The Heartland Collective - Sign Up Today!JOIN PATREON FOR MORE - AND JOIN OUR SOCIAL NETWORK!“Change The Conversation”Outro Song: “The World Is On Fire” by American Aquarium http://www.americanaquarium.com/
Friday News Flyover, January 19, 2024Oil train delayed | Abortion rights advocates speak with Senators | Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and GOP-dominated legislature's priorities | and OH Sen. Sherrod Brown and MO Rep. Jason Smith make big bi-partisan deal on Child Tax CreditIf you're new to our shows make sure you subscribe and leave a 5 star rating wherever you listen. You can also find Heartland POD content on Youtube and on social media @ THE heartland pod, and learn more at thehearltandcollective.com This train is not leaving the stationForest Service withdraws key permit for controversial Utah oil-train project opposed by ColoradansProject would dramatically increase hazardous shipments through Colorado communitiesBY: CHASE WOODRUFF - JANUARY 18, 2024 9:18 AMA controversial Utah oil-train proposal opposed by Colorado communities and environmentalists was dealt another blow this week when the U.S. Forest Service withdrew a key permit for the project.In an announcement published Wednesday, Ashley National Forest Supervisor Susan Eickhoff blocked the issuance of a permit to the Uinta Basin Railway to construct 12 miles of railroad track through a protected area of the national forest in northeast Utah. The stretch of track in question is part of the proposed railway's 88-mile connection between the oil fields of eastern Utah's Uinta Basin and the existing national rail network.The project has drawn fierce opposition from Coloradans. A federal “downline analysis” estimated that 90% of the resulting oil-train traffic — as many as five fully loaded, two-mile-long trains of crude oil tankers per day — would be routed through environmentally sensitive and densely populated areas in Colorado, en route to oil refineries on the Gulf Coast. The oil trains would more than quadruple the amount of hazardous materials being shipped by rail through many Colorado counties.Colorado's Eagle County and five environmental groups sued to overturn the Uinta Basin Railway's approval, and in August 2023 a panel of federal judges ruled that the approval process contained “numerous” and “significant” violations of the National Environmental Policy Act. The ruling vacated portions of the project's environmental impact statement and ordered the federal Surface Transportation Board to redo its analysis of key environmental risks.Because the Forest Service's decision in August 2022 to grant a right-of-way permit to the project was based on that flawed analysis, the agency has withdrawn its decision pending further proceedings at the STB.Ted Zukoski, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued to block the project. “This is wonderful news for the roadless forest in Utah's Indian Canyon and the wildlife who call it home. It's a victory for the Colorado River and nearby communities that would be threatened by oil train accidents and spills. If the oil train's backers attempt to revive this dangerous scheme, we'll be there to fight it again.”In a press release, Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, who had urged multiple federal agencies to put a stop to the project, applauded the Forest Service's move.“A derailment along the headwaters of the Colorado River could have catastrophic effects for Colorado's communities, water, and environment. I'm glad the Forest Service has taken this important step to protect the Colorado River and the tens of millions of people who depend on it.”U.S. Senators and Abortion Rights Advocates Discuss State Abortion Access LimitationsBY: JENNIFER SHUTT - JANUARY 17, 2024WASHINGTON — During a Capitol Visitors Center briefing, abortion rights advocates and Democratic U.S. Senators called for reinstating legal and safe abortion access nationwide. The nearly three-hour session featured physicians discussing the difficulties faced in states with restrictive abortion laws following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade.Dr. Austin Dennard, a Texas OB-GYN involved in a lawsuit against the state's abortion laws, spoke about the validity and personal nature of each abortion decision. He highlighted patients' fears about family planning in states with restrictive laws, noting the adverse impact on what should be a joyful life chapter.The briefing preceded the annual anti-abortion March for Life, with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Rep. Chris Smith scheduled to speak. Senate Democrats criticized efforts to limit abortion access and discussed two upcoming Supreme Court cases with significant implications.One case focuses on mifepristone, a key medication in abortion and miscarriage treatments, while the other revolves around the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). The Biden administration argues that EMTALA should protect doctors performing abortions as emergency medical treatment in states with strict anti-abortion laws.Dr. Serina Floyd, a Washington, D.C. OB-GYN and Physicians for Reproductive Health fellow, expressed confusion over Republican efforts to target EMTALA, emphasizing the potential life-saving importance of emergency abortion care. She noted research indicating severe consequences for patients denied abortion access, including health risks, economic hardship, and staying in violent relationships.Dr. Floyd advocated for non-interference from the government in medical decisions, stressing that patients are capable of making informed choices about their health and lives with their healthcare providers.Senator Patty Murray of Washington highlighted her state's influx of abortion patients from restrictive states like Idaho. Murray and other senators at the briefing expressed concern that residents in states with abortion protections might not realize the impact of a potential nationwide abortion ban or Supreme Court decisions.Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan pointed out that even states with constitutional reproductive rights, like Michigan, are not fully shielded from the effects of a national abortion ban. After hearing doctors' testimonies, Stabenow expressed astonishment at the challenges facing both physicians and women needing abortion access, questioning the progress made in women's rights, asking, “is it 2024 or are we back in 1984?”Kansas Legislature Fast-Tracks Tax Reform Opposed by Governor KellyBY: TIM CARPENTER - JANUARY 17, 2024TOPEKA — Kansas Republican legislative leaders are expediting a tax reform bill focusing on income and sales tax changes, including a single-rate state income tax of 5.25%, which Democratic Governor Laura Kelly has threatened to veto.The bill, bypassing regular committee processes, is set for early-session debate in the Senate. The proposed tax overhaul would lead to a state revenue reduction exceeding $1.5 billion over three years, surpassing Governor Kelly's proposed $1 billion cut. The plan to implement a flat tax rate of 5.25%, replacing Kansas' three-rate income tax structure, has been met with opposition from Governor Kelly because it disproportionately benefits the wealthy.The bill also proposes eliminating the state income tax on Social Security benefits, aligning with Kelly's proposal. Additionally, it seeks to remove the state sales tax on groceries starting April 1, advancing the timeline from the previously set January 1, 2025. The measure includes an exemption for the first $100,000 in state property taxes from all Kansas homeowners for school finance purposes, adjustable for inflation.Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins, both Republicans, view the bill as a compromise, claiming it addresses issues faced by retirees and families while tackling inflation.Governor Kelly vetoed two major tax reform bills in 2023, which the Republican-dominated Legislature couldn't override. “We must get that money back into Kansans' pockets — and we will — in a fiscally responsible and targeted way,” Kelly said. “In a way that doesn't threaten progress on all the other issues Kansans care about. Unfortunately, that's exactly what one proposal — the flat tax — would do. ” Kansas' Governor Kelly calls for hearing on Medicaid expansion bill that would cover 150,000 KansansBY: RACHEL MIPRO - JANUARY 17, 2024 2:35 PM TOPEKA — A Medicaid expansion proposal has been enrolled into state House and Senate committees despite continued opposition from top legislative Republicans. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who has spent the months leading up to the legislative session rallying across the state for Medicaid expansion, called for a hearing on the bill by Jan. 29. “It's easy to sum up the Cutting Healthcare Costs for All Kansans Act: health care coverage for 150,000 Kansans, cost savings for everyone else. We protect our rural hospitals, and Kansas taxpayers pay nothing extra,” Kelly said in a Wednesday announcement of the proposal's enrollment. “The legislature should listen to the over 70% of Kansans who support Medicaid Expansion and give this bill a hearing by Kansas Day.” Rep. Vic Miller, D-Topeka, introduced the bill in the House Appropriations Committee and on the Senate side, Sen. Pat Pettey, D- Kansas City, introduced the bill into the Senate Ways and Means Committee. “Medicaid expansion is not only popular, but it saves lives, creates jobs and saves our rural hospitals. Hardworking Kansans shouldn't die because of legislative inaction,” Miller said.Medicaid expansion would unlock $700 million in annual federal funding and could potentially save 59 rural hospitals at risk of closing. Kelly unveiled her latest Medicaid expansion package in December, but Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins remain opposed to expansion, calling the move a way to expand the “welfare state.” Lawmakers last came close to expansion in 2020, when former Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning worked out a bipartisan deal with Kelly. But the deal fell apart as Republicans, outraged by a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, focused on placing a constitutional amendment on abortion before voters instead,Child Tax Credit and Business Incentives Merged in New Tax ProposalBY: ASHLEY MURRAY - JANUARY 16, 2024WASHINGTON — Leading members of Congress released a bipartisan, bicameral tax proposal Tuesday, promising a middle-path deal to help low-income families and provide incentives for businesses as Trump-era tax breaks expire.The framework led by U.S. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri would raise the child tax credit incrementally through 2025 and restore tax relief for affordable housing projects.The three-year proposal would also make exempt disaster payments to wildfire victims and to those who suffered losses after the massive train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Sen. Wyden, chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, said in a statement that “(f)ifteen million kids from low-income families will be better off as a result of this plan, and given today's miserable political climate, it's a big deal to have this opportunity to pass pro-family policy that helps so many kids get ahead.”Democrats have been pushing to permanently raise the tax credit that low-income families receive per child after a temporary increase during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated significant reductions in child poverty. Wyden also praised the deal's potential to spur affordable housing construction and said that his goal “remains to get this passed in time for families and businesses to benefit in this upcoming tax filing season, and I'm going to pull out all the stops to get that done.”Rep. Jason Smith, chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means, said “American families will benefit from this bipartisan agreement that provides greater tax relief, strengthens Main Street businesses, boosts our competitiveness with China, and creates jobs.”“We even provide disaster relief and cut red tape for small businesses, while ending a COVID-era program that's costing taxpayers billions in fraud. This legislation locks in over $600 billion in proven pro-growth, pro-America tax policies with key provisions that support over 21 million jobs. I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this legislation,” Smith continued in a statement Tuesday.And for those who file 1099 forms, a provision tucked away in the framework would increase the threshold to file to $1,000 from the current $600.The proposal won praise from across the tax policy spectrum.Business Roundtable, an advocacy organization representing a wide range of U.S. CEOs, described the deal's pitch to revive expired pro-business policies as “critical to strengthening America's global competitiveness.”Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat and key supporter of the child tax credit, urged his colleagues to pass the deal, calling it a “win-win for Ohio families and Ohio manufacturers.”Sen. Brown said, “The deal's expansion of the Child Tax Credit will help parents keep up with the rising cost of living and ensure that their hard work pays off. The business provisions will support American companies that invest in our nation's research and manufacturing. The deal also ensures that residents of East Palestine won't get hit with a surprise tax bill for payments they received from Norfolk Southern after last year's derailment.”Pretty, pret-ty good. Welp that's it for me, from Denver I'm Sean Diller. Stories in today's show can be found in the Missouri Independent, Ohio Capital Journal, Kansas Reflector and Michigan Advance. Thanks for listening, see you next time. @TheHeartlandPOD on Twitter and ThreadsCo-HostsAdam Sommer @Adam_Sommer85 (Twitter) @adam_sommer85 (Post)Rachel Parker @msraitchetp (Post) Sean Diller (no social)The Heartland Collective - Sign Up Today!JOIN PATREON FOR MORE - AND JOIN OUR SOCIAL NETWORK!“Change The Conversation”Outro Song: “The World Is On Fire” by American Aquarium http://www.americanaquarium.com/
In this week's episode of the People Places Planet podcast, Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein engages in an illuminating discussion with Vanderbilt Professor W. Kip Viscusi about the social cost of carbon—a hotly debated and frequently litigated number—that is used to quantify the harm caused by one ton of carbon emissions. They are joined by ELI Senior Attorney Linda K. Breggin and Vanderbilt Law student Kyle Blasinsky. This important number is used in developing a range of regulations and soon will be used in federal budgeting and purchasing decisions, as well as National Environmental Policy Act reviews, under a new Biden Executive Order. Professor Sunstein, an Obama Administration Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Administrator, discusses the key judgement calls that must be made in developing the social cost of carbon, such as the appropriate discount rate and approaches to incorporating equity, and offers his views on developing a number that can withstand arbitrariness review in any renewed effort to challenge the number in court. Professor Sunstein's related article Arbitrariness Review and Climate Change was selected for inclusion in this year's Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review, which recognizes scholarship that presents creative and feasible legal and policy solutions to pressing environmental problems. ELPAR is published annually by the ELI's Environmental Law Reporter in collaboration with the Vanderbilt University Law School. ★ Support this podcast ★
This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Sept. 19. It dropped for free subscribers on Sept. 26. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoChris Sorensen, Vice President and General Manager of Keystone, ColoradoRecorded onSeptember 11, 2023About KeystoneClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Vail ResortsLocated in: Keystone, ColoradoYear founded: 1970Pass affiliations:* Epic Pass: unlimited access* Epic Local Pass: unlimited access* Summit Value Pass: unlimited access* Keystone Plus Pass: unlimited access with holiday blackouts* Tahoe Local: five days combined with Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Crested Butte, Park City* Epic Day Pass: access with All Resorts and 32-resorts tiersClosest neighboring ski areas: Arapahoe Basin (:08), Frisco (:19), Loveland (22 minutes), Breckenridge (:25), Copper (:25), Vail (:44), Beaver Creek (:53), Ski Cooper (:56) – travel times vary considerably given traffic, weather, and time of year.Base elevation: 9,280 feetSummit elevation: 12,408 feet at the top of Keystone Peak; highest lift-served point is 12,282 feet at the top of Bergman Bowl ExpressVertical drop: 3,002 feet lift-served; 3,128 feet hike-toSkiable Acres: 3,149 acresAverage annual snowfall: 235 inchesTrail count: 130 (49% most difficult, 39% more difficult, 12% easiest)Lift count: 20 (1 eight-passenger gondola, 1 six-passenger gondola, 4 high-speed six-packs, 3 high-speed quads, 1 fixed-grip quad, 1 triple, 2 doubles, 7 carpets)Why I interviewed himKeystone arrived in 1970, a star member of the last great wave of western ski resort development, just before Snowbird (1971), Northstar (1972), Telluride (1972), and Big Sky (1973). It landed in a crowded Summit County, just down the road from Arapahoe Basin (1946) and five miles overland from Breckenridge (1961). Copper Mountain came online two years later. Loveland (1937) stood at the gateway to Summit County, looming above what would become the Eisenhower Tunnel in 1973. Just west sat Ski Cooper (1942), the mighty and rapidly expanding Vail Mountain (1962), and the patch of wilderness that would morph into Beaver Creek within a decade. Today, the density of ski areas along Colorado's I-70 corridor is astonishing:Despite this geographic proximity, you could not find more distinct ski experiences were you to search across continents. This is true everywhere ski areas bunch, from northern Vermont to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to the Wasatch. Ski areas, like people, hack their identities out of the raw material available to them, and just as siblings growing up in the same household can emerge as wildly different entities, so too can mountains that sit side-by-side-by-side.Keystone, lacking the gnar, was never going to be Jackson or Palisades, fierce and frothing. Sprung from wilderness, it could never replicate Breck's mining-town patina. Its high alpine could not summon the drama of A-Basin's East Wall or the expanse of Vail's Back Bowls.But Keystone made its way. It would be Summit County's family mountain, its night-ski mountain, and, eventually, one of its first-to-open-each-ski-season mountains. This is the headline, and this is how everyone thinks of the place. But over the decades, Keystone has quietly built out one of Colorado's most comprehensive ski experiences, an almost perfect front-to-back progression from gentle to damn. Like Heavenly or Park City, Keystone wears its steeps modestly, like your quiet neighbor with a Corvette hidden beneath tarps in the polebarn. All you notice is the Camry parked in the driveway. But there are layers here. Keep looking, and you will find them.What we talked aboutHopeful for that traditional October opening; why Keystone is Vail's early-season operator in Colorado; why the mountain closes in early April; breaking down the Bergman Bowl expansion and the six-pack that will service it; the eternal tension of opening hike-to terrain to lift service; building more room to roam, rather than more people to roam it; the art of environmentally conscious glading; new lift-served terrain in Erickson Bowl; turning data into infrastructure; why the Bergman sixer won't have bubbles; why Bergman won't access The Windows terrain; the clever scheme behind renaming the Bergman Bowl expansion trails; building a new trailmap with Rad Smith; where skiers will be able to get a copy of the new paper trailmap; comparing the Peru upgrade to the Bergman lift project; the construction mistake that delayed the Bergman expansion by a full year; the possibility of lifts in Independence, North, and South Bowls; falling in love with skiing Colorado, then moving to Michigan; why Vail bought a bunch of Midwest bumps; when you get to lead the resort where you started bumping lifts; what makes Keystone stand out even though it sits within one of the densest concentrations of large ski areas in North America; thoughts on long-term lift upgrades, and where we could see six-packs; whether the Argentine lift could ever return in some form; the potential for a Ski Tip lift; where Keystone could expand next; whether a Windows lift is in play; North American Bowl; when we could see an updated Keystone masterplan; why Keystone gets less snow than its neighbors; assessing Epic Pass access; and night skiing. Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewKeystone is opening one of three large lift-served ski expansions in Colorado this winter: the 500-plus-acre Bergman Bowl, served by a high-speed six-pack (the other two are Hero's on Aspen Mountain and Mahogany Ridge at Steamboat). While this pod has occupied the trailmap as hike-to terrain for years, more people will likely ski it before noon on a typical Monday than once slogged up the ridgeline in an entire winter. Keystone has renamed and somewhat re-sculpted the trails in honor of the occasion, inviting the masses onto a blue-square oasis at the top of Summit County.Which is always a good excuse for a podcast. But… this terrain was supposed to open in 2022, until the project ran into a high-altitude brick wall last July, when construction crews oopsied a road through sensitive terrain. Vail Daily:Construction of a new chairlift at Keystone Resort was ordered to cease this week after the U.S. Forest Service learned that an unauthorized road had been bulldozed through sensitive areas where minimal impacts were authorized.Keystone Resort, which operates by permit on U.S. Forest Service land, was granted permission by the White River National Forest to construct a new chairlift this summer in the area known as Bergman Bowl, creating a 555-acre expansion of Keystone's lift-served terrain. But that approval came with plenty of comments from the Environmental Protection Agency, which recommended minimal road construction associated with the project due to Bergman Bowl's environmentally sensitive location. …White River National Forest Supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams said while the Forest Service does approve many projects like Bergman Bowl, officials typically don't allow construction of new access roads in Alpine tundra.“When you drop a bulldozer blade in the Alpine, that is very fragile, and very difficult to restore,” Fitzwilliams said.In Bergman Bowl, the Forest Service has found “damage to the Alpine environment … impacts to wetlands and stuff that we normally don't want to do,” Fitzwilliams said.As a result, Fitzwilliams issued a cease and desist letter to Vail Resorts. He said the company immediately complied and shut down the impacted parts of the project.The Forest Service has not yet determined if a full restoration can occur.“When you impact the Alpine environment, it's not easy to restore,” Fitzwilliams said. “Sometimes, although achievable in some areas, it's difficult.”Vail Resorts, which has staked much of its identity on its friend-of-the-environment credentials, owned the mistake and immediately hired a firm to design a mitigation plan. What Keystone came back with was so thorough that it stunned Forest Service officials. Blevins, writing a week later in the Colorado Sun:White River National Forest supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams on Thursday said he accepted Vail Resorts' cure for improperly grading 2.5 acres outside of approved construction boundaries, including 1.5 acres above treeline in the fragile alpine zone. The company's construction crews also filled a wetland creek with logs and graded over it to create a road crossing and did not save topsoil and vegetation for replanting after construction, all of which the agency found “were not consistent with Forest Service expectations.”Fitzwilliams rescinded his order of noncompliance and canceled the cease-and-desist order he issued last month after Forest Service officials discovered the construction that had not been permitted. …“Quite honestly, it's the best restoration plan I've ever seen in my life. Even our staff are like ‘Oh my god,'” Fitzwilliams said. “The restoration plan submitted by Keystone is extremely detailed, thorough and includes all the necessary actions to insure the damage is restored as best as possible.”The damage to fragile alpine terrain does require additional analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act, but Fitzwilliams said that can be done while the construction continues.On Thursday afternoon, resort officials said the further environmental review will keep Bergman Bowl from opening for the 2022-23 season, a development Keystone general manager Chris Sorensen said is disappointing but necessary.Indeed. The only way out is through. But how did that plan go? And what is Vail doing to make sure such mistakes don't recur? And how do you manage such a high-profile mistake from a personal and leadership point of view? It was a conversation worth having, and one that Sorensen managed well.What I got wrong…About the exact timeline of Vail's Midwest acquisitionsI kind of lumped Vail Resorts' first three Midwest acquisitions together, but there was quite a bit of space between the company's purchase of Afton Alps and Mt. Brighton, in 2012, and its pickup of Wilmot in 2016. The rest came with the Peak Resorts' acquisition in 2019.About Copper Mountain's season pass priceI said that it was “about $750” for a Copper pass or an Ikon Base Pass. Both were undercounts. Copper's 2023-24 season pass debuted at $799 and is now $849. The 2023-24 Ikon Base Pass, which includes unlimited access to Copper Mountain, debuted at $829 and now sells for $929.About the most-affordable big-mountain ski passes in the United StatesI said that Keystone offered “the most affordable big-mountain season pass” in the country. With peak-day walk-up lift tickets scheduled to hit $269 this season at Keystone, that may seem like an odd declaration. But it's almost true: Keystone sells the second-most-affordable unlimited season pass among America's 20 largest ski areas. Sister resort Park City comes in cheaper on a cost-per-acre basis, and Vail Mountain is tied with Keystone. In fact, four of the top five most affordable big-mountain passes are at Vail-owned properties (Park City, Keystone, Vail, and Heavenly):About night skiingI said that Keystone had “the largest night-skiing operation in America.” This is incorrect. I tried to determine who, indeed, hosts America's largest night-skiing operation, but after slamming my head into a wall for a few hours, I abandoned the exercise. There is absolutely no common standard of measurement, probably because 14-year-olds slamming Bang energy drinks and Faceposting from the chairlift aren't keen on fact-checking. Here's the best I could come up with:Even that simple chart took an embarrassing amount of time to assemble. At some point I will return to this exercise, and will include the entire country. The Midwest will factor significantly here, as nearly every ski area in the region is 100 percent lit for night-skiing. New York and the Mid-Atlantic also host many large night-skiing operations, as do Bolton Valley, Vermont and Pleasant Mountain, Maine. But unless I wanted to publish this podcast in June of 2024, I needed to flee this particular briar patch before I got ensnared.Why you should ski KeystoneThe Keystone you're thinking of is frontside Keystone, Dercum Mountain, River Run and Mountain House, Montezuma and Peru. That Keystone has a certain appeal. It is an approachable outsiders' version of Colorado, endless and wide, fast but manageable, groomed spirals ambling beneath the sunshine. Step out of the Suburban after a 16-hour drive from Houston, and find the Middle Earth you were seeking, soaring and jagged and wild, with a pedestrian village at the base.Keep going. Down Mine Shaft or Diamond Back to North Peak: 1,600 vertical feet of moguls bigger than your car. A half-dozen to choose from. Behind that, yet another peak, like a third ski area. Outback is where things start to get savage. Not drop-off-The-Cirque-at-Snowbird savage, but challenging enough. Slide back to Timberwolf or Bushwacker or Badger – or, more boldly, the trees in between – for that wild Colorado that Texas Ted and New York Ned find off Dercum.Or walk past the snow fort and click out, bootpack a mile and drop into Upper Windows, the only terrain marked double black on Keystone's sprawling trailmap. A rambling world, crisp and silent beneath the Outpost Gondola. Until it spits you out onto Mozart, Keystone's I-70, frantic and cluttered all the way to Santiago, and another lap.Podcast NotesOn Keystone's 2009 masterplan Keystone's masterplan dates to 2009, the second-oldest on file with the White River National Forest (Buttermilk's dates to 2008). The sprawling plan includes several yet-to-be-constructed lifts, including fixed-grips up Independence Bowl and Windows, a surface lift bisecting North and South Bowls; and a two-way ride out of Ski Tip. The plan also proposes upgrades to Outback, Wayback, and A-51; and a whole new line for the now-decommissioned Argentine:Since that image isn't very crisp, here's a closer look at Dercum:North Peak:And Outback:Sorensen and I discuss the potential for each of these projects, some of which are effectively dead. Strangely, Keystone's only two new chairlifts (besides Bergman), since 2009 - upgrading Montezuma and Peru from high-speed quads to sixers – were not suggested on the MDP at all. Argentine, which once connected the Mountain House Base directly to the Montezuma lift, was a casualty of the 2021 Peru upgrade. Here's a before-and-after:Argentine, it turns out, is just the latest casualty in Keystone's front-side clean-sweep. Check out this 1996 trailmap, when Dercum (called “Keystone” here), hosted nine frontside chairlifts (plus the gondola), to today's five:On the new Bergman Bowl trail namesBergman Bowl has appeared on Keystone's trailmap since at least 2005. The resort added trail names around 2007. As part of the lift installation, we get all new trail names and a few new trails (as well as downgrades, for most of the old lines, to blues). Keystone also updated trailnames in adjacent Erickson Bowl, which the new lift will partially serve. Sorensen and I discuss the naming scheme in the pod:On Rad Smith's new hand-painted Keystone trailmapSince 2002 or so, Keystone's trailmap has viewed the resort at a slight angle, with Dercum prioritized, the clear “front side.”The new map, Sorensen tells us, whips the vantage around to the side, giving us a better view of Bergman and, consequently, of North Peak and Outback. Here's the old map (2022 on the left), alongside the new:And here's the two-part video series on making the map with Rad Smith:On Vail's new appI've driven round trip between New York City and Michigan hundreds of times. Most of the drive is rural and gorgeous, cruise-control country, the flat Midwest and the rolling mountains of Pennsylvania. Even the stretch of north Jersey is attractive, hilly and green, dramatic at the Delaware Water Gap. All that quaintness slams shut on the eastbound approach to the George Washington Bridge, where a half dozen highways collapse into the world's busiest bridge. Backups can be comically long. Hitting this blockade after a 12-hour drive can be excruciating.Fortunately, NJDOT, or the Port Authority, or whomever controls the stretch of Interstate 80 that approaches the bridge after its 2,900-mile journey from San Francisco, has erected signs a few dozen miles out that ominously communicate wait times for the GW's upper and lower decks. I used to doubt these signs as mad guesses typed in by some low-level state employee sitting in a control room with a box of donuts. But after a couple dozen unsuccessful attempts to outsmart the system, I arrived at a bitter realization: the signs were always right.This is the experience that users of Vail's new My Epic app can (hopefully) expect when it comes online this winter. This app will be your digital Swiss Army Knife, your Epic Pass/stats tracker/snow cam/in-resort credit card/GPS tracker with interactive trailmap. No word on if they'll include that strange metal spire that's either a miniature icepick or an impromptu brass knuckle. But the app will include real-time grooming updates and chairlift wait times. And if a roadsign in New Jersey can correctly communicate wait times to cross the George Washington Bridge, then Vail Resorts ought to be able to sync this chairlift wait-times thing pretty precisely.On Mt. Brighton being built from landfillDepending upon your point of view, Mt. Brighton, Michigan – which Sorensen ran from 2016 to 2018 – is either the most amazing or the most appalling ski area in Vail's sprawling portfolio. Two-hundred thirty vertical feet, 130 acres, five chairlifts, seven surface lifts, and about four trees, rising like some alt-world mini-Alps from the flatlands of Southeast Michigan.Why is it there? What does it do? Who would do such a thing to themselves? The answer to the first question lies in the expressways that crisscross three miles to the east: crews building Interstate 96 and US 23 deposited the excess dirt here, making a hill. The answer to the second question is: the place sells a s**t-ton of Epic Passes, which was the point of Vail buying the joint. And the answer to the third question is obvious as well: for the local kids, its ski here or ski nowhere, and little Midwest hills are more fun than you think. Especially when you're 12 and the alternative is sitting inside for Michigan's 11-month winter.On Keystone's potential West Ridge expansionSorensen refers to a potential “West Ridge” expansion, which does not appear on the 2009 trailmap. The ski area's 1989 masterplan, however, shows up to five lifts scaling West Ridge between North Peak and Outback (which was then called “South Peak”):On Keystone being among Colorado's least-snowy major resortsIt's a strange fact of geography that Keystone scores significantly less snow, on average, than its Colorado peers:This makes even less sense when you realize how close Keystone sits to A-Basin (115 more inches per season), Breck (118), and Copper (70):When I hosted OpenSnow founder and CEO Joel Gratz on the podcast last year, he explained Keystone's odd circumstances (as well as how the mountain sometimes does better than its neighbors), at the 1:41:43 mark.On pass prices across Summit County creeping up over the past several yearsSummit County was Ground Zero for the pass wars, during which a preponderance of mountains the size of Rhode Island fought to the death over who could give skiing away the cheapest. There are many reasons this battle started here, and many reasons why it's ending. Not the least of which is that each of these ski areas hosts the population of a small city every day all winter long. Colorado accounts for approximately one in four U.S. skier visits. The state's infrastructure is one rolled-over semi away from post-apocalyptic collapse. There's no reason that skiing has to cost less than a load of laundry when everyone wants to do it all the time.As a result, prices are slowly but steadily rising. Here's what's happened to pass prices at the four Summit County ski areas over the past six seasons:They've mostly gone up. Keystone is the only one that is less expensive to ski at now than it was in 2018 (on a season-pass basis). This chart is somewhat skewed by a couple of factors:* For the 2018-19 ski season, A-Basin was an unlimited member of the Epic Pass, Epic Local Pass, and Summit Value Pass, a fact that nearly broke the place. The drastic price drop from 2018 to '19 reflects A-Basin's first year outside Vail's coalition.* Vail cut Epic Pass prices 20 percent from the 2020-21 ski season to the 2021-22 campaign. That's why Breck and Keystone are approximately the same price now as they were before the asteroid attack, Covid.* Little-known fact: Copper Mountain sells its own season pass, separate from the Ikon Pass, even though the mountain offers unlimited access on both the Ikon Base and full Ikon passes.On Mr. OklahomaI don't want to spoil the ending here, but we do talk about this.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 75/100 in 2023, and number 461 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe
In this episode, Johanna Bozuwa of the Climate and Community Project shares a progressive vision for permitting reform and the factors that could speed up the US clean-energy buildout.(PDF transcript)(Active transcript)Text transcript:David RobertsTo achieve its Paris climate targets, the US is going to have to build out an enormous amount of clean energy and clean-energy infrastructure in coming years. But that buildout is going slowly — painfully, excruciatingly slowly — relative to the pace that is necessary.This has given rise to considerable debate on the left over what, exactly, is slowing things down. Much of that debate has come to focus on permitting, and more specifically, on permitting under the National Environmental Protection Act, or NEPA.A deal that would have put some restrictions on NEPA in exchange for reforms to transmission planning was effectively killed by progressives toward the end of the last congressional session, leading many people inside and outside the climate movement to accuse progressives of being The Problem. They are so attached to slowing down fossil fuel development with NEPA, the accusation goes, that they are willing to live with it slowing clean energy. And that's a bad trade.Progressives, not surprisingly, disagree! Their take on the whole permitting debate is summarized in a new paper from the Roosevelt Institute and the Climate and Community Project: “A Progressive Vision for Permitting Reform.”The title is slightly misleading, since one of the central points of the paper is that permitting under NEPA is only a small piece of the puzzle — there are many other factors that play a role in slowing clean energy, and many other reforms that could do more to speed it up. I called up one of the paper's co-authors, Johanna Bozuwa of the Climate and Community Project, to ask her about those other reforms, the larger political debate, and the progressive community's take on speed. All right, then. With no further ado, Johanna Bozuwa from the Climate and Community Project. Welcome to Volts, and thank you so much for coming.Johanna BozuwaThank you so much for having me, David.David RobertsThis is a hot topic, as you're well aware, permitting and the larger issues around it. And so, before we jump into specifics, I wanted to start with a few sort of broad, call them philosophical, questions.Johanna BozuwaPerfect.David RobertsAs you know, progressives have been under quite a bit of fire lately, not only from their typical opponents on the right and in the fossil fuel industry, but from a lot of sort of centrists and even a lot of sort of allies in the climate movement. For — I think the general idea is they are too attached to stopping fossil fuels and not yet supportive enough of building out renewable energy. And the mechanisms that they rely on to slow and stop fossil fuels are also slowing and stopping renewable energy. And so I think the general critique is that they ought to swing around and be more pro-building and loosen these requirements, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sure you've heard all this.Johanna BozuwaYes.David RobertsSo I guess I'd just start with this question. Is, do you think the progressive — and by the way, I meant to say this by way of a caveat, I'm going to be sort of using you as a spokesperson for progressivism, which I think we both realize is ridiculous.Johanna BozuwaRight, exactly.David RobertsProgressives are heterogeneous just like anybody else. There's no official progressive position. But as a crude, let's just say as a crude instrument here, we're going to ask you to speak for that perspective as you see it.Johanna BozuwaPerfect.David RobertsSo in your opinion, do you think progressives have taken it into their heart that things are moving too slowly and they desperately need to move faster?Johanna BozuwaMy answer to that question is that I think speed is progressive. You know, David, I don't need to tell this to you or any of the people that listen to this podcast or even progressives. We're dealing with the existential threat of the climate crisis and lives are on the line. And so I think that as progressives, we do need to take the speed question seriously. And I think what I would push back on is the fact that people have this myopic focus on permitting as the thing that's slowing everything down. And especially when I'm talking about permitting, NEPA permitting.David RobertsRight. We're going to definitely get to that.Johanna BozuwaYeah. And I just think that when it comes to this question of "Do progressives believe in speed?" I think that they actually very much do. And one of the things that I get frustrated with sometimes, when I hear these arguments like "Oh, progressives don't want to build anything," I think what progressives are interested in is building the right thing. And if we think about the United States and how our energy system rolls out today, we have a real issue that fossil fuels can expand at the same time as renewable energy is expanding. Like when it comes to fossil fuels, we can actually export that.We are now the biggest net exporter of LNG and crude oil. And I think that progressives are particularly aware that if we do the wrong thing on permitting then we're actually not only expanding renewable energy — and maybe poorly done renewable energy — but also the fossil fuel industry knows how to use these tools so much better than our renewable energy developers. And we are going to see just a massive expansion that we absolutely don't need right now. If we think the climate crisis matters.David RobertsWhat about the argument which goes like this: Fossil fuels are reaching sort of a structural peak and decline. Renewable energy is getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. It's on the rise. So if you just, all things being equal, make it easier to build everything across the board, renewable energy will win that race and so it's worth doing.Johanna BozuwaI just don't think that argument is true, look at how much power the fossil fuel industry still has in making these decisions. Like if we look at who is behind the recent push for permitting reform: It was largely the oil and gas industry. There's definitely some more nuance that's there, but they have significant power to move things and move them faster than the clean energy world. It's a question of when you're rolling back some of these bedrock environmental laws that the pie — it's not that the part of renewable energy in the pie is getting bigger. It's that even if we are getting more renewable energy, the pie itself has expanded so that we're having fossil fuels and renewables expanding at the same time.And it's not fully pushing out the power of the fossil fuel industry.David RobertsWell, then, how about this? And this is the final philosophical question before we get down to some nuts and bolts. Do you agree that there are going to be trade-offs as we pursue speed? This is, of course, the big discussion right now is that if you really double down on speed, if you really pursue speed with everything you've got, there are inevitably going to be some trade-offs, some other progressive values that have to take a backseat. And that might be other environmental impacts. It might be impacts on communities. It might be, you know, name it. It might be that we have to loosen up a little bit on those other things.Do you think that there are those trade-offs?Johanna BozuwaI think that there are some trade-offs. You, I think, had my colleague, Thea Riofrancos, on the pod some time ago talking about lithium extraction, right? And the fact that if we are going to decarbonize our transportation sector, it is going to take extraction in order to accomplish that. Right. And there are substantial and significant impacts that has in terms of water contamination in some of the most drought-impacted parts of the United States, that is something that we need to be thinking about. And I think what my hesitation is when it comes to so much of this conversation is that we're talking about deregulation as the way to do speed instead of actually talking about planning and coordination.And from my perspective, it's the planning and coordination that allows us to think through the decisions we're making with a far better sense of what's happening instead of a "get government out of the way, we'll figure it out" project that — it didn't really do great things for the planet. Are we going to do that again and trying to fix it? That seems like a silly mistake to make.David RobertsYeah, that's a really important distinction. I'm glad we get that out up front. Because I hate when we go from, "Yes, there are trade-offs" to therefore "Let it rip, let everything go." As Thea said on the podcast, we can acknowledge those trade-offs and thoughtfully try to minimize them through planning.Johanna BozuwaExactly.David RobertsSo let's start with this. As you say, there's this sort of what we're calling the permitting debate, quote unquote. Permitting debate is actually a bunch of debates and they're all kind of getting squished together under this notion of permitting. But in fact, there's a lot of things going on here other than permitting. So maybe talk just a little bit about all the disparate things that are now sort of getting lumped together under that rubric.Johanna BozuwaExactly. So I think just to put a point on it, often when people are talking about permitting, they're talking about this unfocused conversation about cutting red tape. But really what it comes down to is where the fight is right now in particular on the national stage is around NEPA. So the National Environmental Policy Act, but wrapped up into all of their arguments are all these other pieces that actually are maybe more of the problem than particularly NEPA. So, you know, four of them, just to start us off, obviously we do have NEPA. That's part of the permitting process.We have local and state zoning permits, approvals, things like that. You know, going to Georgia County to make sure that you can put something through. Then you have third, these contracts or arrangements that are actually between private organizations. David, I know you had folks talking about internet connection queues — that often is part of the permitting debate, but it's actually about who gets to go onto the transmission that's being built.David RobertsLet me pause there because I want to make a point that I'm not sure everybody understands and I'm not even sure we made it in that pod. But the ISOs, the ...Johanna BozuwaIndependent service operators. I know I always mess it up. RTOs. ISOs.David RobertsYes, I know. ISOs and RTOs. I could never call that to mind. But anyway, the ones who are sort of running the transmission systems and running these queues are not public organizations. Those are not state organizations. They are private consortia of transmission organizations and utilities and things like that. So it's not something that the state can come in and just directly change. I just think that's worth sort of putting on the record.Johanna BozuwaI think that's a really important point and I think we'll probably dig into this further. But the idea that and I think you talked about this on the pod last time, but there are so many different kind of private actors that are operating within the RTOs and ISOs with not actually a huge amount of oversight, as it currently stands.David RobertsYes, or transparency.Johanna BozuwaOr transparency.David RobertsOr accountability, really.Johanna BozuwaYeah, exactly. And it turns out if we're looking at what's really miring the buildout of renewable energy, a solid amount of it is right there. Is in the interconnection queues. I think it was Southwest PowerPool — takes like eight years sometimes to get the developer to get their project through. And those are for projects that already have their offtaker and have all their permitting in place. So it just feels quite misguided for us to spend all of this time talking about permitting when we could be actually diagnosing the problem —David RobertsAnd you said there was a fourth.Johanna Bozuwa— and there's a fourth. The fourth one, I would say, is just operation and construction permits, like some of the pollution discharge stuff that is at some of these more local levels. And those four don't even include some of the other things that stop things, which is like access to capital, utility squabbles, supply chain slowdowns, these whole host of other issues that are just being swept under the rug because it's very alluring to say, guess what? I have the one quick fix to make sure that renewable energy gets built in the United States.David RobertsAnd local NIMBYism. I'd throw that in.Johanna BozuwaYeah, yeah, local NIMBYism, absolutely. Add it to the pile, exactly. So and NEPA's not going to do things about local NIMBYism in the same way that's the local and state zoning stuff.David RobertsYeah, I think people really want, for obvious reasons, they're frustrated by everything going so slowly and everybody wants there to be sort of like something to cut the Gordian knot, sort of one, as you said, one weird trick. And that's, I think, why people are grasping onto NEPA because it seems like that's one big thing we can argue about and change. But as you say, the reasons here are very disparate. But let's just take a second to talk about NEPA. I go back and forth on this, but is it, do you think the progressive position that NEPA is okay "as is" and doesn't need any changes?Like, do you think there are problems with NEPA and how it's administered?Johanna BozuwaOkay. My feeling on this is that the case about NEPA is overstated, especially as we describe so many other things, even outside of the permitting process that matters. But if we're going to talk about NEPA, I think overall the projects are going through pretty quickly. There was a new study, actually, this month by, I think, David Adelman that did a really comprehensive look at wind and solar NEPA reviews over the past ten years, and he found that less than 5% of Wind and solar projects required. The EIS, like the Environmental Impact Statement, which is the one that takes the most time usually, can be two and a half years or whatever, but they're going through with categorical exclusions or some of these faster ways to move wind and solar projects through, or just projects in general.And he found that there was very little litigation involved, which is often like the dog whistle, I feel like, of some of these folks who are calling for permitting.David RobertsYeah, I was surprised when I looked at that study. It's a relatively low percentage of those projects that get litigated after they're done.Johanna BozuwaRight, exactly. And I think if I were to make any improvements to NEPA, the thing I would do is bulk up the administrative state. Jamie Gibbs Pleune wrote a kind of corresponding piece of research to our permitting report where she investigated and talked about NEPA in particular with Roosevelt. But she was looking at another paper and found of 40,000 NEPA decisions that the US Forest Service looked at, the biggest causes of delays were actually from a lack of experienced staff, budget instability, and honestly, delays from the applicants themselves not getting their stuff in on time. So I just feel as if we're going to do anything to make NEPA better, give the BLM, give US Forest Service, give EPA far more funds, training, staff empowerment that's going to actually move these projects even faster through the pipeline when they're actually moving relatively quickly.And these places have experienced chronic understaffing and lack of empowerment. So there is work to be done there. I don't want to understate that, but I think that it's a reasonable thing for us to accomplish without rolling back and applying a very neoliberal frame to how we get this job done.David RobertsYeah, I would say it does seem like NEPA has sprawled a bit since it was passed. Originally, it was supposed to be major projects that came under NEPA review, and the court basically decided that all projects were under NEPA review. And so there's just thousands and thousands now that just have these little sort of not very long delays because they get these categorical exemptions. But there's just a lot of — it's very sprawling, it seems like, and unfocused. This is one of those areas where I feel like there are procedures of the administrative state that could work better and more effectively.But at this point, liberals, they've just been under assault for so long. And liberals just know if you open this can of worms, if you open it up to review, there's just a pool of piranhas that want to go in and strip it bare. And so they just don't open it for review. Like, there's so many things like this. Like, if we could have a good faith process of actually trying to do what NEPA is supposed to do better than NEPA does it, I feel like, yeah, there's stuff we could improve, but Joe Manchin doesn't want to improve it.Johanna BozuwaWe don't want Joe Manchin in charge of what NEPA looks like and what's the more muscular version that takes into consideration the real-life climate impacts. Because I don't know when you're talking there, David, a thing that comes up for me is the reality that we will have more things happening on the ground. Like, let's say you put transmission in, we have a wildfire crisis. Now all of a sudden, the stakes are higher when it comes to these things like environmental review that are very material that I think also aren't talked about as much as they should be. And so, yeah, I can imagine things being shifted and changed within NEPA so that it works better for the current context.But I think that, as you describe it, could be a real political problem for us to do that type of work right now. And we have other mechanisms that can move us much more quickly in the interim. Like, is this really the thing we want to be spending our time on as progressives? The answer is no.David RobertsAnd I also think if you look at the reforms that were sort of ended up getting jammed through, like of all the thoughtful things you could do to NEPA to make it work better, just a sort of — page limit, like a page limit on reviews: Seems like it's such a blunt instrument. It's such a crude way of approaching this.Johanna BozuwaOh, and I think it's going to get them into serious trouble. If you want a thing that is going to increase litigation, try adding an arbitrary deadline and page limit to something with no administrative capacity.David RobertsOkay. We could do a whole pod on NEPA, but I don't want to get too — our whole point is it's not the sole or even main impediment here. So at a slightly more granular level, let's talk about what you think is actually slowing down clean energy infrastructure build out. And there's a few categories your report covers starting with transmission, which is, I think, the big one.Johanna BozuwaYeah, totally. And I would agree with you. I mean, transmission planning is kind of in shambles in this country. It's not up to the job.David RobertsYeah, I don't think literally anybody on any side of anything would disagree with you about that.Johanna BozuwaExactly. And I think there are a couple of reasons for that. One is that multistate transmission buildouts are incredibly hard to do in a federalized system. We just have so many different actors that are vying to hold on to their particular part of the market, especially with our vertically integrated utilities that don't have much interest in allowing other utilities into their service territory. And in deregulated states, utilities are kind of out of the picture for deciding where new generation is being built. So there's not a lot of efficiencies that are built into that. So we just get this really haphazard development, if development at all, of our transmission system, which I think is just quite a failure.There are so many clear opportunities to do much more clear planning around this.David RobertsYes. And then what about big large-scale renewable energy projects like big solar, wind, geothermal, what is in practice, slowing down their build out?Johanna BozuwaYeah, so I think that when it comes to some of these larger scale projects around solar or wind, you're running again into projects that aren't thinking strategically about where they're being placed. So if we're looking at the amount of land that we're going to need with the energy transition right. Wind and solar take more space up than one natural gas plant. And I think that there's just like a clear lack of land use planning when it comes to these larger scale projects when we could be doing it far better. Right. And thinking about what are the areas that make sense and are going to limit the amount of impact on our landscape and on communities and actually deploy it in those areas.And I actually think there are answers to that question.David RobertsWell, we're not to answers yet. We're dwelling on problems.Johanna BozuwaOkay, all right —David RobertsSo how does that slow down? I mean, what does that manifest as? How does that slow down the build out?Johanna BozuwaYeah, well, the way that that manifests is that you're putting big renewable energy projects in tension with things like agriculture. You're putting big renewable projects in tension with our biodiversity goals. And so those are the things that are going to potentially mire the development and deployment of these larger scale projects — in addition to getting them attached to the transmission and making sure that it's colocated with the transmission we need.David RobertsYes, the aforementioned interconnection queue issue, which alone is like, "That's a lot of years," which as you say, that's a lot of years tacked on the end of all the other stuff they have to go through. Like once they have to go through all that other stuff, then they get in the interconnection queue and wait and wither, etc. And then another thing you take on here is a big piece of the clean energy buildout, which I think a lot of people don't really think about as much, maybe don't enjoy thinking about as much, which is the sort of minerals and metals aspect of it. A big part of IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, is an attempt to onshore supply chains so that China does not dominate them.But that means onshoring some mines and some minerals processing which are not necessarily environmentally friendly, not necessarily things people like having in their backyard. So what's slowing those things down?Johanna BozuwaI guess I would say there are two pieces that are happening. One is just that this is a pretty new area and there are so many price fluctuations that are happening. There's all of these big mining companies that are shifting ownership, trying to figure out financing. Right? So there's a lot that's happening there. And mining companies are not the best known for having perfect environmental impact statements or anything like that, that's going to get them mired right. And then you add in the fact that as we talked about earlier, a lot of where these lithium reserves are is also in extremely — like the likelihood for drought is a lot higher if you're looking, for instance, at the Salton Sea in California or, you know, over in Nevada, these are places that we actually have to be extremely careful about. And also it just takes a really long time to build a mine like this isn't something that happens the next day. Right. It's like 10 to 15 years in the future type thing. So it is a longer time frame that's going to be even longer if we aren't thinking, again, about who is impacted, how they are going to be impacted by the mining itself. What is that going to do to air quality, water quality, all of these different things?It's a really big part of the permitting discussion, or of the transition discussion in particular that is being discounted in the United States.David RobertsAnd one more bit on problems, before we transition to recommendations. I noticed that one thing you don't get into a lot in the report is the expression of those state and local level permitting issues. And a lot of those I think, are tied to environmental review. And a lot — like, for instance, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is just sort of like legendarily at this point, a tool for local NIMBYs to stop things happening. Like we just read a story that was bouncing around Twitter a few days ago about these wealthy people — I forget what county they were in — but they were suing because someone had moved a playground closer to their house.They didn't like the sound of the kids playing and so they sued. And part of it was that the city had not done a proper environmental review under CEQA of moving the playground. And you hear stories like that all the time. Do you think you said that NEPA is not as big a problem as people say? Do you think state level environmental review is a serious problem, a serious barrier, at least in some places?Johanna BozuwaI think it just really depends on the place. And I think that's part of why as we were writing a national paper, being able to dig into the detail and differentiations between all of these different places seemed like a big haul for a small paper. So yeah, I think that there are these pieces at the local level, the zoning things, right? People are historic preservation boards that are saying like, "No rooftop solar because we don't like the look of it." Yeah, that's some BS in my mind and I think we do need to figure out how to manage that.And I think what this comes into conversation with is a little bit of like, what is the community review process? What does that look like and how do we manage that?David RobertsContemplating the variety and number of those instruments at the state and local level is really overwhelming and really does make the problem feel so intractable because it's just like, as you say in a federalist system, it's like every bit of reform is not just one bit, it's 50 bits. Every bit is 50 fights.Johanna BozuwaTotally agree. And I think that's why we get stuck in these gridlocks sometimes. And also when we get to solutions, I think there are some examples that we can draw on and utilize our little multi tool of ideas of how to move this forward.David RobertsFinal thing before that, because I forgot about this bit, but actually it's worth making a note that it's actually easier for fossil fuel infrastructure to get NEPA permits than it is for clean energy projects. It's something you note in the paper. If anything, NEPA is easier on these pipelines and stuff. Even though Joe Manchin is complaining ceaselessly about it.Johanna BozuwaYes, and I mean, I think that's why in particular, people who have been fighting the fossil fuel industry for so long, look to this group of folks, more center left folks, that are saying "Repeal NEPA, let's do it, we want to build." They're saying, "Oh my gosh. What you're doing by saying that is saying that the West Virginian that I have been fighting alongside is going to be decimated by this pipeline that's being passed now." So there are really high stakes and in a lot of the permitting process that we saw at the federal level, it also implicated the Mountain Valley pipeline.Right. And that type of infrastructure getting a pass when it couldn't even get some of its permits at the state level to just go forth is a really, I think, scary potential because that locks us into decades of extraction.David RobertsYeah, I feel like that was not covered well when this whole thing happened. You know, the Mountain Valley Pipeline: It's not that it was like stuck unfairly in a bureaucratic tangle. It just sort of straightforwardly was polluting and so it couldn't get the permits, the permits were rejected. It wasn't like stuck in some queue or something. It was just straightforwardly a polluting project that could not qualify under US law to go on. And it was just like jammed through. So I feel like the outrage of that didn't really penetrate partially because everybody's on this like "everything needs to go faster tip" and so they just kind of slotted it under there.But we don't want things that straightforwardly fail environmental review going forward do we?Johanna BozuwaExactly, like, I would like, that the Cuyahoga River does not catch on fire again. And that's the reason we have environmental review and NEPA. And also I would like it to be able to stop more fossil fuel infrastructure.David RobertsYeah, I know. And this is the other thing too, as though we're supposed to have some sort of content neutral opinions about permitting as such. I'm just like, "Well, I want more good stuff and less bad stuff. Can I have that opinion?"Johanna BozuwaExactly. That's so crucial too, where there are ways for us to stop permitting new fossil fuel infrastructure and permit the hell out of good renewable energy projects. That's a political possibility that Biden actually had signed up for and now is stepping back on.David RobertsYeah, I mean, it's politically tough, but let's be positive here. You have a lot of recommendations in here, all of which are juicy, all of which could probably have a podcast of their own on them. There's no way we can cover them all. But you sort of have your principles and recommendations grouped under three headings. And the first one, which I think is the one that is most directly germane to the speed question, is enabling more coordination and planning. And I think this is a huge thing. This is one of my soapboxes I get on all the time.I really want the climate movement to take this up is that we've had decades and decades of for lack of a better term, neoliberalism and this sort of instinctive free market stuff. And it's not like any major developed economy actually stops planning. What happens when you claim you're not planning and you claim you're being a free market is you just move planning behind closed doors or bury it in the tax code where no one can see it or understand what's happening. And then that results in whoever has the most power and money winning the planning fights.So I'm done with my soapbox. Let's talk about restoring our ability to do public, transparent, cooperative planning. Let's talk about a few of the items under here. And first is just land use planning. What do you mean by that and what would it look like?Johanna BozuwaSo, land use planning, as we talked about earlier, it turns out that one fossil fuel plant is a lot smaller than the types of assets that we need to build. That's just a reality of what we're working with. And so that necessitates far more land use planning to think about how do we get the most out of the least amount of space that is going to do the best for keeping the lights on. And so there are examples of how we can do this type of land planning. And one example I want to bring up actually is in California.So there was the Desert Renewable Energy Plan that was basically where states and federal agencies came together and they were looking at the Mojave and Colorado desert area. It's like 22 million acres.David RobertsVery sunny.Johanna BozuwaYeah, very sunny, exactly. Very sunny, very good for some solar. And what they did is that they coordinated a plan for this entire region so that it was prescreened for issues. So they said, okay, we're going to look at the biodiversity impacts of things being put here. We're going to look at the cultural or tribal impacts, the environmental potential impacts. And so after they did that kind of, what's called often like a programmatic study, that meant that the developers that came in to build the stuff there don't have to go through some more involved environmental impact assessment or study because it's already done.And so that meant that because they had done all of that work ahead of time, projects are getting approved so much faster. They're getting approved in less than ten months. And have, I think it's been now this zone has been around for about ten years and I don't think there is one litigation case. So that is just such a good example of land use planning where it's like thinking ahead of what we need and how we're going to do it. And that still does allow for private developers to come in, even though I might even argue that we could do even more planning and fill in the gaps with some public transmission or public renewable energy.But we can get into that later.David RobertsAnd we did an example from California, so I think now we're constitutionally obliged to do one from Texas too.Johanna BozuwaAbsolutely. Well, exactly. Thank you for setting me up so neatly, David, for the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones of Texas, which was such a success. So this is a very similar situation where the legislature directed the PUC, the Public Utilities Commission to plan where new generation and transmission was going to be located, routed, all of this. And so by doing so, they allowed for this proliferation of wind in Texas, a place where you might not expect a massive amount of wind to be. And I was reading a study the other day that said that in the past ten years, the CREZ line, so the Competitive Renewable Energy Zone, represents 23% of all new high voltage lines in the US.David RobertsGood grief.Johanna BozuwaRight?David RobertsYeah. They're actually building I mean, I don't know if people know this, they're actually building transmission in Texas. I'll just talk about how transmission never gets built. They're building it there because —Johanna BozuwaThey had a plan.David RobertsThey planned in advance. Yes, they had zones where it got approved and so you didn't have to then go there and do the entire like a transmission developer didn't have to go somewhere and then do the entire thing. Right. Do the entire review, do the entire land use review and the environmental review. They didn't have to start over every time that stuff was done in advance.Okay, point made. There more land use coordination and planning. That's the states doing it. But you could imagine the feds getting into that somewhat. You have these jurisdictional issues and federalism issues that are a bit of a tangle, but it does seem like the feds at the very least could do some informational, advisory planning and assessment on a bigger level, don't you think?Johanna BozuwaOh, absolutely. Actually, we do have a lot of private land in this country. Absolutely. But there is a lot of land that is owned by the federal government. So they're actually implicating a lot of this already. And it makes far more sense for an actor that has that kind of meso level understanding of what we need to build to be involved in those processes and be doing kind of a national assessment of where should those zones be. Like CREZ that's going to have all of these benefits and is going to allow for the most kind of efficient way for us to be deploying renewable energy while also taking into consideration these biodiversity, tribal nation relations and all of these things.That's a good role for the federal government to actually play.David RobertsOkay, we're going to pass quickly by two of these since I've done pods on them. But as you say, one is the interconnection process, which is probably the biggest thing right now, slowing down renewable energy getting built. I did a whole pod on that with RMI's Chaz Teplin a few weeks ago.Johanna BozuwaA fantastic one.David RobertsReally encourage everybody to go listen to that. There's a lot of recommendations in there for how to improve the interconnection process, how to improve things in batches. To return to a theme here, a lot of that has to do with just more and better planning on the ISO's parts.Once again, like, think in advance a little bit and you can skip some of this case by case stuff, but I encourage people to go listen to that pod. Another one, which we've touched on slightly, which I also did a pod on, is just and I think this is so important is just the capacity of the agencies that are doing these reviews. These are at the state level and at the federal level. These agencies have been cut to the bone. They're all, all understaffed, desperately behind, and that, of course, makes things go slower. So all these people who are whinging about reviews, if they're not talking about bulking up agency capacity, I just have trouble taking them seriously because that is the lowest hanging fruit you could do.But I did a whole pod on that several weeks ago about government capacity and about some of the provisions in the IRA that are meant to bulk up capacity at these agencies. It's just a matter of money and hiring. So we're going to check that one off the list. Let's talk a little bit about this next recommendation, which is about more publicly owned energy and transmission. What do you mean by that? What would that look like?Johanna BozuwaYeah, so this is kind of trying to answer the question of building where private companies will not, right? Like, we do have this problem of not having the long-range solution in the mind's eye, right? And we have this system in which there isn't a lot of this coordination that's in the mind's eye of a developer, right? Like, they're focused on their development, whereas the state government, federal government, has a little bit more of like, "Okay, what are we trying to accomplish? We are trying to handle the climate crisis. And that means we need to move as quickly as possible to deploy as much renewable energy as possible.And it turns out we actually do have some capacity and to actually build this ourselves." And we've done this in the past, admittedly, in a much less dense energy system. But the New Deal is a really good example of this, where the U.S. either directly financed or built itself a massive amount of transmission and energy infrastructure, like the Rural Electrification Administration that FDR put in place. It electrified 80% of the United States land mass in ten years. And when we're talking about the climate crisis, I would like to go at that clip. So I think if there are ways for us where we have a standstill where things aren't getting built fast enough, where can the federal government, the state government come in with a little political muscle and do that building?And I think that there are additional kind of benefits to doing this too, which include the fact that if you're building public renewables, for instance, you're also probably going to value having higher and better-paid jobs. You are probably going to, in comparison to a private developer, probably thinking a little bit more about some of those community benefits. And I think that there's a real win there that actually kind of creates a baseline for the rest of the private industry in a good way too.David RobertsInstead of just nudging and incentivizing private developers to do these things, we could just do them.Johanna BozuwaWe could just do them and we can also show them the way a little bit too. Right. Like right now, right. We just have the Inflation Reduction Act. Fabulous. We love the climate investments. It's so great. And also it just largely relies on tax incentives, right. And in those it's like you get a little bit more if you use local steel and if you have high wage jobs, all these things. And we could also just do that, build some public renewables and make it happen ourselves. And also when you have, particularly from a job perspective, right, like a public renewables entity that's building these developments with high wage work, that means that the private developers are afraid that they're going to lose all of their workers.So then they have to raise their wages too, which is a good thing.David RobertsRace to the top, I think they call that.Johanna BozuwaI would love a race to the top instead of a race to the bottom in our renewable energy world.David RobertsYes. Okay, we got to keep moving here. There's a long list. The next one is something we covered, I think, on the Thea Riofrancos post, which is just we know we have to build a lot of stuff, but that's not a fixed quantity of stuff we have to build. Right. We can be more efficient with how we use materials. We can try to build in a less material intensive way. So, you know, what Theo was talking about is encourage more walking and biking and multimodal transportation rather than cars, cars, cars. Like that's a choice. And there are other choices we could make to build a clean, but the less material intensive version of clean.There's a lot of different ways we can guide things in that direction.Johanna BozuwaOh yeah, absolutely.David RobertsEveryone should go listen to that podcast, too. This pod is like an advertisement for all my other pods.Johanna BozuwaI love it, I love it. Yeah. And just to kind of emphasize, the more that we can invest in efficiency, the fewer transmission lines we might have to build, right? Like if we have a bunch of houses that aggressively go in on multi units. Like, we're having more people housed in multi units. We're creating urban density. We're making the houses that we already have more efficient. All of those things accumulate and make it so that we actually don't have to do the same level of massive deployment, which is a huge win. So we have to — I think it's like questioning some of the assumptions, too, of how much do we need to build.David RobertsRight. Maybe not all our private vehicles need to be the size of military tanks and weigh three tons. This segues perfectly into the next one, which I feel like is underappreciated, which is supporting distributed energy resources. Talk about why that's part of going faster here. How does that fit into this picture?Johanna BozuwaSo let's say we're able to add rooftop solar to a lot of the rooftops that are around and implement microgrids and put in storage. These are all, again, things that are going to be a lot easier probably to deploy because they're smaller. There's less of this zoning permitting etc. that has to happen when it comes to some of the bigger stuff, where you're going to maybe need environmental review. And so by making those investments in distributed energy resources, you're actually lightening the load again on transmission development.David RobertsRight. It's kind of a piece of the previous one, really.Johanna BozuwaTotally.David RobertsIt's about being less material intensive.Johanna BozuwaExactly. And I also think the added benefit of doing that, of course, is the fact that we live in unreliable times and it adds additional reliability potential by having things like microgrids deployed.David RobertsYes, many future pods on that particular subject are in the works, are cooking in the Volts oven. Let's go to the second big category here, and this is where I have a little bit of skepticism. So this category is "Enhance community participation and consent." So this is what I want to talk about: You say, let's bring communities in more and earlier. And of course, I think most people, at least most people in my world, when they hear "more community involvement," their palms start sweating. They envision these local zoning meetings with old people shouting at city officials.They envision nothing ever getting done, everything getting blocked, NIMBY's everywhere. You have this sentence where it says, "Strengthening community participation early in the process will likely move projects forward faster without as much community opposition." Do we know that to be true? I want that to be true. I like the idea of it. Do we know that?Johanna BozuwaGreat question. It's worth interrogating. I'm going to borrow a little bit from my colleague that we've already referenced today, Thea Riofrancos, that she often says which is "Sometimes going fast isn't actually fast." So, you know, if we streamline, right, or NEPA gets streamlined or many of these other permitting processes, you cut the red tape and therefore you are steamrolling communities affected by the infrastructure. You're potentially hardening them against the project. And when they feel mad or disenfranchised, chances are they're going to throw the book at you. They're going to throw the book to stop the project. We talked about these arbitrary dates set by some of the permitting system.You're actually putting yourself up for far more potential litigation and drawn out legal battles because you actually haven't done the work that's necessary to bring that group on side, nor do you have all of your ducks in a row. So I think that there is a justification for defraying conflict and making our odds better at doing that. I'm not saying that we're not going to run into problems and there isn't going to be this annoying mob of Karens that's going to show up every once in a while. But I do think that our odds do look better when we do involve community.David RobertsThere's a cynical point of view here which says communities are always going to have their Karens. There's always going to be somebody who objects, no matter how early, no matter how much you consult, there's always going to be somebody who doesn't want something near them. The only way in the end to overcome this problem is to take those instruments of delay out of their hands, including the litigation tool, including the environmental review tool, including the community review tool, and just get a little bit more Chinese about the whole thing. Just go do stuff, even if — bulldoze, basically.I know we want to resist that conclusion, but I wish we knew better. I wish we had better models of moving quickly.Johanna BozuwaSo I think actually, since you mentioned the Chinese, I'm going to mention the Danish. And I think that part of this is actually like — we have this problem, right, that we know that deploying renewable energy, deploying clean energy is just incredibly important for the climate crisis. But the benefits are diffuse where the potential negative is pretty concentrated when it comes to these things. And so I think one question we can ask or the permit reviewers or whatever it is, or how we're thinking about developing these projects, is getting in their shoes and asking, what is in it for me?We can pay people to have some of this stuff, right? So the Danish government in the 1990s was building out a bunch of wind. And so one of the ways that they incentivized this wind development was by incentivizing that part of it is owned by the local government to give them a revenue stream. And that actually helped to limit the controversy. And you'll see that in Denmark, people have kind of higher concepts or like the polling is better for wind. And I was talking with this professor, Nick Pevzner from University of Pennsylvania, who was discussing this really interesting particular instance in which in one of these towns where they were going to be around the offshore wind, they actually brought in landscape architects to design the offshore wind. So that it would be aesthetically pleasing.David RobertsThe Danes give a shi-, give a dang, about how things look like. What a thought.Johanna BozuwaHuge difference.David RobertsYes, I know. You look at what's the one waste incineration plant in the middle of the town that's like gorgeous. It's got a laser display, I think it's got a ski hill on it. All these kind of things. It seems like we don't care here in the US. How ugly things are. Witness any sort of midsize town or strip mall or the periphery of any city. Everything's just like plain and ugly. Like what if we made things look nice that might improve community —Johanna BozuwaWe deserve nice things. Communities deserve nice things.David RobertsWe can have nice things. And you talk about we should do what's called a "Cumulative impact analysis."Johanna BozuwaYes.David RobertsAgain, to me on first blush that sounds like oh, bigger and more analysis: Surely that's going to slow things down. So how do you see that working?Johanna BozuwaWell, again, this kind of takes us to our planning. Right. Like cumulative impact analysis which New Jersey and New York have put in place is this way to discern not just the impact of the project but the accumulated impact of that project and what's already come to date. And I think what you would find in cumulative impact in these places, is that actually it's doing some of what we were talking about before, which is trying to fight off the bad and build more of the good. So that's a way to stop new fossil fuel infrastructure but maybe see benefit around solar or something like that.These are actually tools that, yes, as you say, at first glance you might think, "Oh my gosh, more? Really?" But what it's doing is assuring some of that larger meso level discerning and also in a lot of ways these are environmental justice tools too. Right. The reason that they're doing that is because it has so consistently been the same community that has had to shoulder the coal plant, then the gas plant, then the pipeline, then another cement factory. Right. And so they're trying to say, "Okay wait, this is out of control. Let's think about where we're putting this and how that's going to burden people."David RobertsSo the last category here is "Empower a just transition." And I don't think we need to go piece by piece through here since these are very familiar asks from progressive climate people, which is just stop permitting new fossil fuel facilities. Protect the communities that are getting hurt by fossil fuel pollution and set emission reduction targets that will phase out fossil fuels. I think those are all pretty straightforward. I do think the point here, though the larger point you're making with this section is worth underlining because it seems obvious to me, but also frequently left out of this debate, which is if you want to get renewable energy built faster: One way you could do that is through statute and regulation forcing fossil fuel out. Like, nothing's going to speed up renewable energy more than forcing fossil fuels out. Right. It seems so obvious, but it's weirdly left out here.Johanna BozuwaVery weirdly left out. It's a bizarre kind of development that we've seen in the climate realm, right? The IRA, for instance, that is a bill that is great. It creates a lot of carrots, but basically no sticks. And the reality is we need sticks if we're actually going to do this, right, as we were talking about at the kind of outset of the show, we can't let just the entire pie keep on getting bigger and bigger. We actually need to get rid of the fossil fuels. That's the point of what we're doing here. They're the reason that we have the climate crisis.And so, the best way to get rid of them is to just regulate them out of existence, like eliminate them. And I also think there's a certain amount of private industry hates regulation, but they do love certainty. So what is more certain than a decarbonization mandate that says, like, well, you need to be done by this date? And that actually gets us to more of the displacement than when we just say "Build, build, build just hopefully build the right thing for us, please please."David RobertsYes, I think that's true on several micro levels and it's true on a macro level too. One thing that would help us go faster is if we could just clearly articulate our goals. But we're sort of just hampered by having to beg Joe Manchin for his vote. And to get Joe Manchin's vote, you have to pretend that the whole pie is going to get bigger, that everything's going to grow. That's explicitly the grounds upon which he voted yes on Iraq. He sets it outright. He's like, I voted yes because I thought it was going to grow renewable energy and fossil fuels.In some sense, politically, we can't just come out and say the goal is to get rid of fossil fuels. That's where we're headed. It would just help everybody, private developers, state and local governments, if we were just on the same friggin page. Instead of sort of like backing into this, we're just backing into everything we do. Trying to sort of like wink wink at one another. Like we know what we're doing, they don't know what we're doing. It's just a bunch of confusion.Johanna BozuwaRight? And I think that it's also a little bit laughable because they obviously know what we're trying to do, right? Like, we're not really hiding the bag. And I think that this speaks to the need for us to be like, this is a 20-year fight, we're not done with the fight the progressive left needs to keep — we can't just have IRA and think that we're done and can wipe our hands. I mean, even this conversation that has come up on permitting shows that people are hungry and need more. And the question is okay, how do we build the actual political power so that Manchin isn't the one that's in the driver's seat?David RobertsYes.Johanna BozuwaI think one kind of last thing on this kind of community consent piece or community engagement that makes me really nervous to tie us back to the permitting realm, right. Is that the people who are potentially going to be railroaded by infrastructure that they don't want is rural America. And if you are pissing off rural parts of the United States right now, that's a very short-sighted game to be playing, right. Because you are potentially taking these rural folk who have just been beaten back again and again, and you're turning them to the right, to a growing fascist right, and giving away a massive voting bloc that is going to be crucial for us to continue to win and win again and keep winning until we actually solve the climate crisis.So I think when it comes to this kind of larger political project that we're doing on from a progressive perspective, we have to be wary of this idea that this is — not a get it fixed quick scheme.David RobertsYes. We do not want to tick off these particular communities any more than they're ticked off. I think if you talk to Biden administration officials sort of behind the scenes, they will tell you that part of the design of IRA, part of the thinking behind it is we need to flood these areas of the country that were hollowed out by neoliberalism, hollowed out by globalism. We need to flood them with new economic activity and new development or else our democracy is screwed. But it is also the case that you can't just go stomping things down here and there, willy-nilly, without community consent.They need to have a feeling that they're involved in where and how this is done.Johanna BozuwaYeah, we're trying to bring them into the fight for a populist amazing future, and shoving this down their throats I just don't think is the most effective tactic. And if you look back to the New Deal, right, so much of it was workers. It was people that were in more of rural America. There were so many of these folks who were standing up and fighting. And if we're not setting ourselves up for that same kind of sea change, then I'm afraid we're not going to be able to win this thing.David RobertsOkay. We are just about out of time. So just to kind of review, this is just, I think the point of your report, point of all this is to say the question of speed is not the same as the question of permitting. Technically speaking, permitting is a relatively small piece of the puzzle here. There's lots of other things we could be doing to speed things up that have nothing technically to do with NEPA or even technically to do with permitting. And we've reviewed a lot of them here, and I would commend people to your report to get a fuller picture of them and to think about them.But let me finish, I guess with, this is all a vision. I love this vision, but politics are politics and we live in a fallen world, et cetera, et cetera. So toward the end of last session, there was this chance to have a permitting deal, and basically it was these sort of arbitrary caps on NEPA reviews, the length of NEPA reviews and the Mountain Valley pipeline in exchange for some pretty substantial transmission stuff, some pretty substantial stuff on transmission, federal transmission planning. The progressive movement rallied to kill that. They called it Manchin's dirty deal. They rallied, they killed it.And what ended up happening was the NEPA stuff squeezed through somewhere else. The Mountain Valley pipeline squeezed through somewhere else, and the transmission stuff died. Looking back on that, do you think that was the right political move for the progressive movement to fight that bill? And more broadly, do you think the progressive movement is prepared to sort of make the political trade-offs which are going to be necessary since a lot of this stuff that you list in your report is just going to be very difficult with today's current political distribution of power?Johanna BozuwaYeah, great question, and I think my answer is that the progressive movement still did the right thing. We needed to fight — or the progressive movement folks who were in those fights needed to fight off and make very clear the MVP is not something that we can have — this permitting that's going to expand. It was a big toad to swallow. And I think if we look at some of the transmission stuff, like, sure, it was fine. Was it the things that we were fully looking for? I think it was Hickenlooper's bill, big wires that was in some of those kind of final fights, right.With the Fiscal Responsibility Act, his bill included something like a 30% interregional transfer. The DOE says we need a 120% increase in interregional transfer. That's just not even at the scale that we need, and we'd be giving up so much for it. So, yeah, we didn't fully win that fight, but I think that from what I'm hearing, kind of at the congressional level, there is the potential for another bite at the apple on transmission. There is still some, as we said earlier, right, everyone agrees that transmission is a boondoggle right now and a hot mess. So I think that should be one of the things that we're thinking about as the progressive movement.How do we do that? Right? But I don't think I would go back in time and say "Eh, we should just accept Manchin's deal." I think that it was an important political flag to stamp in the ground that, no, we actually don't believe that we should be expanding fossil fuels and renewable energy at the same time because that's not what we need to do. Saying all that, I do think there are things that we can be doing right now to advance transmission. For instance, FERC is looking at some of these interconnection issues right now. Biden should not rest on his laurels until he gets someone approved and appointed to the FERC board.David RobertsHey, there's Joe Manchin again being a jerk.Johanna BozuwaI know, it's so true. But there are things and again, we've already talked on this pod about stuff that can be done at the state level, too. We still have some cards to play in our hand to accelerate and prove our case increasingly and build the case for more federal implementation, too.David RobertsJohanna, thanks so much for coming on. I feel like lately the progressive environmental left has appeared in mainstream media and social media more as a weird caricature viewed from a distance than been able to speak for itself. So I'm glad to be able to have you on so we can talk through a little bit about how progressives see this and the larger issues at play and their specific recommendations, all of which I think are great. So people should check out your report. And thanks for sharing your time with us.Johanna BozuwaThank you so much for having me today, David. It's lovely.David RobertsThank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf so that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much, and I'll see you next time. Get full access to Volts at www.volts.wtf/subscribe
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