The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was passed in 1969 and was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970. The initiative was pushed through Congress by Henry “Scoop” Jackson. An Indiana professor, Lynton K. Caldwell worked with Jackson on the legislation. Caldwell is considered to be the architect NEPA and U.S. environmental policy.
The following is an excerpt of the history of the Environmental Protection Agency:
Forging such an institution actually represented the final step in a quick march towards national environmental consciousness. Congress recognized the potency of the issue in late 1969 by passing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This statute recast the government’s role: formerly the conservator of wilderness, it now became the protector of earth, air, land, and water. The law declared Congressional intent to “create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony,” and to “assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, aesthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings.” Henceforth, all federal agencies planning projects bearing on the environment were compelled to submit reports accounting for the likely consequences–the now famous Environmental Impact Statements (EISs). Secondly, NEPA directed the President to assemble in his Cabinet a Council on Environmental Quality. Undersecretary of the Interior Russell E. Train agreed to be its first chairman. The Council’s three members and staff would assist the President by preparing an annual Environmental Quality Report to Congress, gathering data, and advising on policy. Signing the Act with fanfare on New Year’s Day 1970, Nixon observed that he had “become further convinced that the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is,” he said, “literally now or never.”
Implicitly, what this legislation did as a matter of policy, was to put people in second place behind protection of the environment. Why? Because we live in the environment. It is our habitat. We can’t live without using natural resources and their mission is to protect those resources. The conflict is inherent in the mission. In the history (link above), one of the paragraphs is headed “An Agency for the Environment”. Think about that.
The 1970 legislation didn’t actually create the EPA as an agency. It created the Council for Environmental Quality (CEQ). The CEQ is an executive branch advisory council. The CEQ recommended creation of the EPA as an agency to manage the process of Environmental Impact Statements. The jurisdiction of the CEQ and the EPA was only WITHIN the federal government – to ensure that the federal government was cognizant of the environment for their projects and policies.
“Under presidential authority, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) issues regulations to Federal agencies regarding the preparation and content of environmental impact statements”. Lynton Caldwell, the National Environmental Policy Act, 1998
NEPA and the implementation of it are deceptively simple. NEPA sets up the policy framework but does not articulate the details. This leaves the details to be defined on the fly. In effect, the CEQ was set up to manage the actions of all federal agencies through the simple mechanism of the Environmental Impact Statement. The position held the power of life and death of an action based on approval or disapproval of the EIS.
Q: How would you characterize EPA’s early involvement in
international environmental affairs?
MR. RUCKELSHAUS: I primarily agreed with Russell Train
that he should take over most of the international work. I did go
to several conferences, was a delegate to the Stockholm
Conference in 1970, and signed some international agreements
to help both developed and developing countries with their
environmental programs. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, we
led the rest of the world in dealing with the environment.
The following is an excerpt from a book written by Caldwell, published in 1998, titled The National Environmental Policy Act: An Agenda for the Future (Pages 97-98):
The scope and substance of national foreign policy reflect changes in beliefs, values, and economies which have been occurring in industrialized countries during the past quarter?century. Issues once regarded as strictly with a nation’s internal affairs (e.g. civil rights, labor policies, status of women, drug traffic, and the environment) have now become potential subjects of international inquiry and negotiation. They involve present and future activities of United States agencies at home and abroad. NEPA, properly interpreted, could guide reconciliation between domestic environmental, economic, and political values and priorities, along with international concerns and commitments.
NEPA by law is supplementary to the missions and mandates of all U.S. Federal agencies. The most celebrated (or, to some troublesome) provision of NEPA is the requirement of an environmental impact statement addressing any major effect on the environment of proposed legislation or administrative action. According to Nicholas C. Yost, who was general counsel to the CEQ under President Carter, NEPA-like legislation “has now been adopted in the national laws of more than 83 countries,” making NEPA probably “the most imitated U.S. law in history”. The latter third of the twentieth century has seen the rapid “globalization” of economic activities, and communications, of military peacekeeping,” mass migrations of people, and of environmental impacts and concerns. The establishment of the United Nations and of numerous specialized agencies with international missions, along with the growth of national foreign aid programs, has resulted in an expanding and diversifying international law and policy infrastructure.
The significance as it pertains to the implementation of United Nations Agenda 21 as domestic policy is that the mechanisms for following the edicts of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) are built into the framework of the domestic environmental organization within the U.S. government itself. There is no need to write a white paper telling federal, state and local agencies to implement Agenda 21 because Agenda 21 policies are integral (i.e. the mission) within the CEQ and EPA and WITHIN EVERY AGENCY OF GOVERNMENT because of the design of NEPA.
UNEP was created as a result of the 1972 Stockholm Conference. The ultimate output from the conference was the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment. A copy of their 40th year anniversary history is available on their website (local copy just in case). The following is from that history – emphasis added:
The Stockholm Conference had agreed on a Declaration with an associated set of Principles. It had agreed on an Action Plan of 109 recommendations: the world’s first tentative blueprint for planetary environmental management. Its scope was enormous, calling for global cooperation to monitor the biosphere, safeguard ecosystems, curb marine pollution, improve housing in poor countries, collect genetic samples, protect whales and other endangered species, study energy needs and sources, aid population planning, conserve soils and forests and fisheries, promote environmental education and training and information exchange, and adapt trade and aid policies so as to share equitably the burdens of environmental protection. Page 27
Another quote from this 40-year history is the following:
“The Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, taken together with the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development agreed in June 1992, now has pride of place among the ever-growing corpus of international law relating to the environment.” Page 17
And this one:
The World Bank, itself a Specialized Agency of the United Nations, though with a rather special statute and status, was increasingly active in the field of environment. As Robert McNamara, the World Bank Group’s President, would later point out in his speech to the Stockholm conference: “Our experience is that environmental protection can be built into development projects as competently and successfully as any other requisite element.” The Bank, Mr. McNamara said, didn’t limit its operations simply to the environment side of development projects. “It finances many projects that are specifically directed at environmental goals — urban water supply and sewerage treatment, for example, as well as soil erosion control, and water resources management.” Page 15
The significance of those quotes will become apparent within the rest of this story but the point for now is that the United Nations has so many specialized agencies that it’s hard to keep track of them. It’s like trying to keep track of a band of gypsies in a clothing store. They are all going in different directions but they all have a single mission.
At the bottom of page 113, the report says that through the early to the mid 1970’s Germany was concerned that the environmental program was not focusing enough attention on international initiatives for the conservation of nature. In particular, they were concerned about migratory birds. Obviously, migratory birds cross borders. What happens next is a classic example of promoting one idea for one purpose without revealing the real underlying purpose.
Willy Brandt was the Chancellor of West Germany at the time. Brandt strongly supported the reunification of East and West Germany. He resigned in 1974 when it was discovered that he had an East German spy in his cabinet. Note: reference to the Helsinki Final Act. In 1977, Robert McNamara, then President of the World Bank suggested the establishment of a commission with Willy Brandt as the Chairman. The name of the Commission was the Independent Commission on International Development. The Commission began work in 1977 and published their report in 1980. It was titled A Programme of Survival although it is most commonly referred to as North-South: A Programme of Survival. The U.S.-Mexico treaty for border environmental cooperation signed in 1983 in La Paz, Mexico commonly known as the La Paz Treaty was the first step towards implementation of the North-South Programme of Survival. It was essentially the beginning of the disintegration of the United States as a sovereign, independent nation state to be replaced over time by a regional management system for North America.
The significance of this Commission cannot be appreciated without an understanding of the organization of the world system of policy development. Because of that, I’ve pulled out a section of the report that gives a good overview of the international institutions – along with the people involved in this commission. Of special note, on page 215, the Commission wrote: UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim showed great interest in the formation of this Independent Commission, and agreed that he would receive the first copy of the Commission’s Report. (Note: Kurt Waldheim was a Nazi).
Pages 26-28, post war – Bretton Woods Institutions
Pages 215-226 – Annexe 2, Members of the Commission and Terms of Reference
American members:
Katharine Graham, Washington Post
Peter G. Peterson, Chairman of the Board of Lehman Brothers
Eminent Persons – invited to testify:
Harlan Cleveland, USA
Henry Kissinger, USA
The following is an excerpt from the beginning of the report to explain the thinking behind the report:
Destruction or Development?
Our Report is based on what appears to be the simplest common interest: that mankind wants to survive, and one might even add has the moral obligation to survive. This not only raises the traditional questions of peace and war, but also of how to overcome world hunger, mass misery and alarming disparities between the living conditions of rich and poor.
If reduced to a simple denominator, this Report deals with peace. War is often thought of in terms of military conflict, or even annihilation. But there is a growing awareness that an equal danger might be chaos — as a result of mass hunger, economic disaster, environmental catastrophes, and terrorism. So we should not think only of reducing the traditional threats to peace, but also of the need for change from chaos to order.
The terms ‘North’ and ‘South’ are used to collectively refer to developed and developing countries respectively – or more accurately perceived as the rich countries and the poor countries. The purpose of the report was to provide an outline of what the world of countries should do as a mission “for the survival of all”. Keeping in mind, this report was published in 1980…
• Peak Oil
“… we face a situation where in the North technological innovations and material changes are more advanced than most people realize whereas in the South the consciousness and aspirations of many people seem to be ahead of material reality. To them we owe a new awareness of the environmental and ecological dangers to our planet. In the crucial field of fuel energy mankind still behaves as if all these resources — up to now so abundantly wasted — were renewable. The oil stock of our planet has been built up in a long process over millions of years, and is being blown ‘up the chimney’ within only a few generations. Exhaustion of these resources is foreseeable but their replacement by alternative fuels is not. Pollution and exploitation are all?embracing, whether of the atmosphere or soil, or of seas which are being overfished with little regard to replenishment. Are we to leave our successors a scorched [19] planet of advancing deserts, impoverished landscapes and ailing environments?” Page 14
• World Trade Organization & Energy
An orderly transition is required from high dependence on increasingly scarce nonrenewable energy sources. Immediate steps towards an international strategy on energy should be taken as part of the Emergency Programme recommended in the final chapter of the Report. Prices which reflect long?term scarcities will play an important role in this. An international trade organization incorporating both GATT and UNCTAD is the objective towards which the international community should work. Meanwhile, there is need for improvement in existing arrangements including wider development of trade cooperation in such matters as the establishment and administration of rules, principles and codes covering restrictive business practices and technology transfer. Page 210
• Disarmament
Could one be content to call something a ‘new world economic order’ if it did not include major progress towards disarmament? Page 10 …The goal of building up a globally respected peace?keeping mechanism, powerful enough to prevent conflicts turning into warfare, should be kept constantly in mind. A strengthened role for the United Nations in securing the integrity of states should result in the reduction of national military expenditures, thus freeing resources for more constructive purposes, including development assistance. Page 89
Building on UN Consensus
The valuable and unprecedented basis for consensus in the UN system, for communicating between North and South, and between East and West, must be preserved. It is vital to get the best out of it, to strengthen it, and to build on it, utilizing the experience of the last three decades and the benefits of wide participation. An increasingly interdependent world must organize itself for the different and more difficult tasks of the future, which will call not only for political will and wisdom, but for a framework of institutions and negotiations which can convert policies and ideas into action. Page 192
Injecting New Purpose into the Dialogue
In earlier chapters we have drawn attention to the common interests of all countries — North, South, West or East — in peace and disarmament, in the attack on poverty and hunger, in achieving an orderly energy transition and in protecting the environment. We have pointed to the strong mutual interests of all countries in worldwide economic growth, control of inflation and promotion of employment. We have underlined the need for solidarity and for a more equal relationship between rich and poor nations in the councils and institutions of the world. Page 192
• Economic Development
…But all countries need an international environment that will be responsive to their development efforts. Herein lies part of the rationale for a new international economic order. Statistical measurements of growth exclude the crucial elements of social welfare, of individual rights, of values not measurable by money. Development is more than the passage from poor to rich, from a traditional rural economy to a sophisticated urban one. It carries with it not only the idea of economic betterment, but also of greater human dignity, security, justice and equity. Page 35
• Regional integration
Wider participation in the development process should be encouraged; measures to achieve this could include decentralized governmental administrative systems and support for relevant voluntary organizations. Regional and sub-regional integration, or other forms of close cooperation, still offer a viable strategy for accelerated economic development and structural transformation among developing countries especially the smaller ones. It supports industrialization and trade expansion and provides opportunities for multi-country ventures. Page 208
Did I mention that Willy Brandt was a Socialist – with a capital ‘S’? And the significance of his resignation was that he was collaborating with Communists against the interests of his own country – West Germany. Factor that into your thinking as this proceeds.
North-South – International Law for the Environment
In 1981, the United Nations Environment Programme held their first conference to discuss the mechanisms to building a body of international environmental law. The meeting was held in Montevideo, Uruguay. In 1982, the program developed in 1981 was adopted by the Governing Council of UNEP and it became known as the Montevideo Programme. They followed the pattern established at the first conference to meet every ten years – followed by a meeting in the next year to adopt the body of international law written in the previous ten years. Adoption meetings occurred in 1992 in Rio de Janiero and 2002 in Johannasburg, South Africa. They appear to have changed the schedule for the Fourth Montevideo conference. It was held in 2009 and Montevideo IV was adopted in 2010.
Excerpt from Montevideo II – “In order to further elaborate the Montevideo Programme to address emerging environmental problems and develop relevant legal regimes, UNEP convened two sessions of the Meeting of Senior Government Officials Expert in Environmental Law for the Review of the Montevideo Programme in Rio de Janiero in October/November 1991 and in Nairobi in September 1992 respectively. Through the two sessions, government experts from more than 80 developing countries and developed countries and observers from relevant organizations attended the meeting. Participants of the latter session of the meeting, taking into account the outcome of UNCED, in particular Agenda 21, considered a draft Programme prepared by the UNEP secretariat and agreed on the Programme for the Development and Periodic Review of Environmental Law for the Present decade.”
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2 Comments
Harold poole
Such horsecrap,, thank Goefor the EPA. As anybody who’s head has not been up their rectum has seen the very reason the EPA exist. The massive cancer rates and poisened childen of love canal and many other toxic waste sites left by unregulated business and people before the EPA. NOT TO MENTION THE ORANGE RIVERS DEVOID OF FISH OR CONTAMINATED SO BAD THEY GIVE YOU SORES ON YOUR BODY. , Or the actual Ohio River that caught fire,. Real embarrassment for business being a Stewart of the planet. The coal waste dumps everywhere. My God,. Radioactive housing plans cause of poor planning and no oversite from the EPA. So you are just a puppet of extraction and corporate greedy who in search of profit will kill all life. Thank God For the EPA and other tireless warriors who sacrifice abuse for fighting to keep these corporate trash from poisening your !ids
Vicky Davis
Have you traced the history of the EPA? I suspect not. We did not have massive environmental damage until it became profitable to clean up messes. The EPA has been turned into an agency engaged in regulatory racketeering and an “off-books” funding mechanism for marxists.
When I was growing up, I never heard about children having cancer except for the occasional case of leukemia. Now… after 45 years of oversight by the EPA, we have exploding cases of cancer among children, we have incredible environmental disasters – such as when that incompetent idiot from the EPA, Mathy Stanislaus managed the “clean up” that dumped old mining waste water into the Animas River. 45 years of oversight by the EPA… what the hell happened? Can you figure it out? I really doubt it.
Take your (red) green flag elsewhere. You might be a sucker for the bullsh*t but I’m not.