Bernie Sanders has strong environmental credentials. Sitting on both the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Energy and Natural Resources Committees, he promotes environmental protection and argues for measures to control climate change. He's opposed to both fracking and the Keystone XL Pipeline; he co-sponsored the Climate Protection Act of 2013 and introduced the End Polluter Welfare Act. All these actions have been popular with his Vermont constituents. They, and the thinking on which they're based, can be expected to play well for him among liberals, and not hurt him in blue states generally.
But what about red state voters? What about conservatives? Is there anything Sanders can say about environmental protection that might not be anathema to them? Anything to counter the inevitable Republican characterization of him as an elitist, ready to elevate the interests of fuzzy owls over those of human beings?
Yes, and what he can do is precisely in accord with his positions on jobs, the economy, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the nation's general tilt toward oligarchy.
Right in line with his consistent support for the ordinary voter over entrenched economic interests, Sanders can and should attack the way legally-mandated environmental impact assessments of government plans have become corrupted - rigged just like the U.S. economy, to benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of ordinary Americans and their valued environments. This attack, properly planned and executed, could resonate with those who believe (with reason) that the government is their enemy.
The environmental impacts of government actions - including its provision of assistance and permits to private industry - are ostensibly reviewed in advance under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA is a perennial Republican whipping boy, excoriated for being an impediment to economic development, a jobs-killer, a deplorable government intrusion into the lives of citizens and the operation of markets. It enjoys uncritical, knee-jerk support from Democrats, few of whom give it much thought. Sanders could quite honestly and justifiably acknowledge - charge, in fact - that NEPA has some serious problems, many of them involving the failure to consider impacts on what's nearest and dearest to people where they live - their social, cultural, economic, and public health environments - and propose to fix them.
Too wonky? Maybe, but is it really wonkier than interest rates and providing subsidies to polluting industries? The Sanders campaign might be surprised at how many voters feel they've been injured by NEPA practice, or let down by it.
There are three big problems with NEPA practice, and they're pretty simple and straightforward. They do hit people where they live, and more and more voters have taken such hits. Fixing them just might be appealing to some conservative voters and not alienate thoughtful liberals. Here they are:
1. Corruption. Although NEPA outlines a list of environmental policies (most honored in the breach), its rubber meets the road in its requirement that federal agencies assess the potential environmental impacts of their decisions before making them, and factor that assessment - known as environmental impact assessment or EIA - into decision making. Today, EIA under NEPA is done by profit-making private companies, many of them owned by larger architecture, engineering and planning firms - in other words, builders of the very projects whose impacts they're supposed to assess. The impact analyses performed by these companies are almost always paid for by project proponents - mining companies, pipeline companies, energy companies - sometimes directly, sometimes via federal and state agencies. It's a formula for crooked, unreliable analyses - like the one performed for the Interior Department on the Deepwater Horizon project, that gave it a clear bill of health. We know how well that one worked out for residents along the Gulf coast.
SOMEBODY has to pay for EIA, and the logical ones to do so are those who want the projects built. But there are ways to insulate the analysts and decision makers from the financiers; Sanders can and should outline a few of these and promise a real effort to explore them and embed those that can work in the regulatory system.
2. Imponderable, inhuman analyses. On the whole, federal agencies like just to get EIA done so they can check it off their "to-do" lists and forget it. So they, or more often the grant-and-permit applicants they oversee, contract for studies. A substantial, well-heeled community of EIA consultants has evolved over the almost half-century since NEPA's enactment, and has developed a pretty rote system for conducting and reporting their work. EIA studies are typically (1) long, (2) complex, (3) written in obscure technical-legal language, and (4) focused on those environmental variables that are easy to count (parts per million of gunk in the water, numbers of endangered species threatened) as opposed to those that actually count in the eyes of the affected public.
They're also often flatly crooked, designed to downplay a project's likely impacts while extolling its virtues. They're virtually immune to review, because it takes technical specialists and lawyers to review them, which most affected communities can't afford.
3. Ignoring the People. Underlying the other problems is what amounts to scorn for the affected and concerned public. In theory, NEPA provides for public participation in federal agency decisions that can affect the environment, but in fact, it doesn't work. There are many ways an agency or applicant can avoid even revealing its plans - by deciding that they're "categorically excluded" from NEPA review, or that they have "no significant impact" on the environment - in the latter case, usually after contracting for massive studies that ostensibly support the agency's (usually pre-determined) conclusion. If citizens DO get to participate, it is usually only by being allowed to review and comment on NEPA documents. Agencies and "environmental" consulting firms are experts at "responding" to such comments in ways that obfuscate and dismiss the issues raised. If members of the public don't have the money to hire their own experts, and to take their complaints to court, their concerns have little chance of being attended to.
The trouble is that "public participation" doesn't mean anything in particular. Notably, it doesn't mean that the agency responsible for a potentially destructive decision has to sit down with those affected, those concerned, and actually talk with them about their issues, seek ways to resolve them. Agencies, regulated industries, and their consulting firms are free to conduct only what's been called "Three-I" participation: "Inform, get Input, and Ignore." IF they allow participation at all.
All this could be fixed, without necessarily even amending the statute. NEPA's environmental impact review system is guided by regulations issued by the Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President. Those regulations could be amended to make analyses more objective, honest, and unbiased, to make them more accessible to the public, and perhaps most of all to require real consultation with affected people - actually working with those affected, seeking ways to resolve their problems. Not giving the tree-huggers a veto, but giving everyone -- tree-huggers, drill-baby-drill advocates, and everybody else -- the ability to make sure their concerns are on the table and actually considered. It has been done in special cases; it can work, and it can be cost-effective.
There's no requirement, however, now that it BE done, and as a result, a lot of environmental impact assessments are useless -- however much they cost and however much time they take to prepare. Sanders could fix this, and proposing to do so SHOULD be a populist vote-getter. It would be in the same spirit as his intention to clean up Wall Street. It, too, would be an attack on those who are profiting mightily at the expense of the American people - and in this case, at the expense of the American environment as well.
Would doing this win over the red states? Not by itself, of course not. But would it swing some red state votes, and some conservative votes elsewhere? I think so. And it would - should - be welcomed by thoughtful people throughout the country, who value the environment and want it wisely managed, and who want a meaningful say in how that management is done.