Why we can’t have nice things

 Environmental reviews in the United States have long passed the bounds of reasonableness. European countries, with far-better environmental protections, are still able to build large-scale infrastructure projects. The United States, not so much.

California is the biggest offender. But it is everywhere. The Purple Line is back in court over ... oh, man. A bridge is too big, and should be made smaller and more expensive. More vegetation needs to be planted between the tracks to reduce runoff. And, of course, we need to protect the Hay’s Spring and Kenk’s amphipod. 

I do not know how to build a political coalition to weaken the environmental laws. Democratic operatives tell me that they would in theory be open, but in practice do not trust the Republicans enough to start the process. Republicans tell me that they would obviously love to weaken the protections, but worry about a backlash from NIMBYs who like the laws for completely non-environmental reasons. But they dismiss Democratic worries as political piffle and say that if the Democrats would provide cover, their amendments would pass.

Either way, it is depressing. We have bad environmental laws that block needed projects for no public benefit, yet the political system is unable to reform them. One side fears losing the baby with the bathwater; the other dismisses those fears but says that a lot of their supporters like being able to throw dirty bathwater at people. Gaaaaaah.

Comments

[Logan]

Progress "can" happen, but a challenge is while it's easy to say "reform" (everyone likes the re-form candidate!) the details are a lot harder. The process has gotten so bad and convoluted in the US small tweaks may not be enough, or everyone has an opinion (a strong one) on where to start first.

I'll note that I'm curious if the US is just BAD at infrastructure, above and beyond the environmental regulations. You've noted before the economic challenges to carbon capture and nuclear, which I don't think are just driven by the environmental regulations. I've seen arguments that energy utilities elsewhere are inefficient even when doing projects separated from any major environmental law.

This moved last year: https://www.nrdc.org/media/2015/150506

It became controversial, of course.

[Noel Maurer]

I suspect that it is more than the environmental laws, but I also suspect that the root cause is the ease at which private opponents can erect legal roadblocks.

But the academic work is still lacking; we really need someone to go through projects line-item by line-item and figure out the cause of astronomical U.S. costs.