The Not-So-Dulcet Tones Which NEPA Sings

Though I have the slightly grotesque feeling of resembling a member of the paparazzi searching desperately for scandals among the celebrities, I have to admit I've discovered some juicy gossip about the National Environmental Policy Act. Through the interviews I've been conducting with the thirteen people I work with over at HEG, it's been much easier to see some of the nuisances that come up more regularly inside NEPA:

1. First, it seems that companies that are supposed to be working with businesses such as HEG to make sure they are complying with all environmental regulations when conducting a project, find it easier to pay a fine for breaking the regulations than to file all the many reports required and to pay a private company to do the research and data collection for the project.
2. In addition, the efficiency of NEPA is sometimes severely lacking. Many companies spend much time investigating projects without relevance to the environment while those projects that require attention are ignored, often due to piece-of-juicy-gossip-number-one.
3. Last, consistency between the several different documents that play a role in NEPA is not always existent, due to the several different agencies that serve to complete these documents, and the several different approaches there are to the documents' completion.

However, there seems to be one thing about NEPA that is mentioned over and over again by those involved in the agency's workings, and that is that the mere existence of NEPA has been one huge step forward toward a point of harmony between the earth and humanity, and it's hard not to see their point. NEPA had a huge impact on many federal agencies and private companies alike, forcing them to take the environment into consideration whether they wanted to or not, allowing it to permeate into our everyday thought processes. Still, NEPA was created in 1969, almost 50 years ago, and has undergone little improvement since. Can it really be said that we are making progress when we have been more or less at a stand still in terms of revolutionary environmental policy since then? The last major step we took toward sustainability as a country was during the time of the Kyoto protocol in the 90s, in which Clinton signed a treaty promising to limit America's contribution to global warming, but did not turn it over to Congress to be ratified. In other words, it appears that the U.S government is still taking a proverbial 50-year nap from work on policy but for occasionally throwing money at cleaner energy resources without any evidence that it is being spent productively. Still, though the government may have pushed the environment to the side, the progress that the general population of America has made toward sustainability and a true green movement is huge, and has impacted not only the way we live our everyday lives but also the way that businesses react to our demands, producing more and more companies willing to invest in greener practices. All in all, the major question at hand is whether or not it can be said that we are where we should be in the timeline of environmental regulation, and if I can avoid the ever-present temptations of procrastination, I may just have an answer by April 29!

On the other hand, very early on Thursday morning I leave for one crazed week of last-minute college visits and will most likely be coming back to spend a few more days up in the dreaded Phoenix, so forgive me if it is a while until my next post. Until then, be good.

- Sierra