Environmentalists are why we can’t build anything anymore
When NYC first built its subway system, it took them less than five years to build 28 stations. Fast forward to today, and it took 17 years for New York City to add just three stations to the Second Avenue Subway line.
Across the country, the Golden Gate Bridge was also completed in less than five years.
And now…
California’s high-speed rail project has been under construction for almost 15 years now and not a single station has been opened.
And the reason?
The big barrier to building things quickly in America today is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which empowers anyone to delay any infrastructure project that requires government action in federal court.
Costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
Put simply, our nation used to be able to build things, and now we can’t anymore.
And it is not just in the US.
Environmental assessments, appeals, adjusting project, rinse and repeat.
Normally, not building things is the environmental movement’s preferred outcome. But now that climate activists want to transform our electrical grid from fossil fuels to “clean” energy, they are beginning to notice that not being able to build things is kind of a big problem.
Really? Do you want to build, follow the rules you helped FORCE onto everyone.
Reforming NEPA to limit the amount of time activists can delay projects would help speed construction of “clean” energy projects and the transmission lines needed to deliver that energy to consumers. But it would also make it easier to build fossil fuel infrastructure as well. And Democrats (and environmentalists) just can’t stomach that.
Oh, too bad, so sad.
What Democrats like Schatz don’t realize is that NEPA reform won’t just make it easier to build energy projects, both “clean” and fossil fuel-based, but it will also make it easier to build everything. Bridges, roads, rail, houses, apartment buildings — everything.
And the need to repair/replace roads, bridges, rail and building new homes and apartments is VERY HIGH.
If the Left wants a world where there is more mass transportation, more “clean” energy, and more affordable housing, the best thing they could do is work with Republicans on real reforms to NEPA.
But the environmentalists/DEMons would rather have everything fall apart, making such places turn into third world countries.
Just look that the left’s control over cities like Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, Portland, etc.
All hell-holes.
.
