Biden Plans to Pick Brenda Mallory to Lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Here's What She Can Do to Boost Public Protections.
UPDATE: The Senate confirmed Brenda Mallory as Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality on April 14, 2021.
President-elect Joe Biden is set to name Brenda Mallory to lead the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the White House office that coordinates environmental policy across federal agencies. Mallory has more than three decades of environmental law and policy experience, served as CEQ general counsel under President Barack Obama, and is currently director of regulatory policy at the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Though somewhat dormant during Donald Trump's early tenure, CEQ ramped up its attacks on environmental policies and protections during the second half of Trump’s term.
It focused its assault on how agencies review the environmental impacts of their actions. Congress required such environmental review beginning in 1970 with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Whenever an agency funds or issues a permit for a big project like an oil pipeline, a bridge, or a highway, NEPA requires that agency to assess its environmental harms and benefits and investigate plausible alternatives to the proposal. The climate crisis has made such review especially important. A new oil pipeline, for instance, could make carbon emissions soar by making it easier to move …
This commentary was originally published on The Regulatory Review. Reprinted with permission.
Throughout his time in office, President Donald J. Trump has boasted about cutting regulations.
His antagonism to environmental regulation has been particularly virulent and incessant. By one count, Trump Administration agencies have initiated or completed 100 environmental rollbacks. By thwarting often bipartisan legislative environmental protection goals adopted over the course of 50 years, President Trump's actions create serious threats to public health and environmental integrity. The Administration's suppression of public participation in regulatory decision-making has also undercut the ability of people and communities harmed by the Administration's deregulatory frenzy to protect themselves.
These anti-environmental and anti-democratic practices converged in the Administration's recent revisions to the Council on Environmental Quality's (CEQ) regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Often referred to as the Magna Carta of U.S. environmental law, NEPA has two main goals …
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