GOP attempting to reduce bureacracy or environmental protections?

NEPA is the federal government's law that requires the government to study the environmental impact of such things as highway construction and allows citizens to interact in making the decision to implement the projects or not.

For 36 years the government has relied on the National Environmental Policy
Act to serve as a check on federal activities that have a "significant impact"
on the environment. The law requires federal officials to determine whether such
things as highway construction and flood-control projects will alter the
surrounding landscape. And it allows citizens to challenge the government's
conclusions. Its scope is so broad, the government conducts 50,000
"environmental assessments" a year.

"There's
a reason they call it the Magna Carta of environmental law," said Rep. Tom Udall
(N.M.), who served as the top Democrat on the House task force that examined the
law. "NEPA is the most important environmental statute, because it involves the
public."

Some Republicans claim to have a problem with the way it works:

But Republicans such as Rep. Cathy McMorris (Wash.), who chaired the 20-member task force, said the law had led to "delays, excessive paperwork and lawsuits" even as it helped guide the government. Late last month her staff released a 30-page report, which is subject to public comment for 45 days, suggesting possible fixes.

Naturally environmentalists have a problem:

Several environmentalists questioned the conclusions, noting that of the 50,000 annual government environmental reviews, only 0.2 percent led to lawsuits. They noted that the Clinton and Bush administrations had assessed how the law was working, and both concluded the problems stemmed from inadequate implementation, not the act itself.

Deborah K. Sease, legislative director for the Sierra Club, said the language in the report was so "vague, you open the door to undermining the principles of NEPA."

Of course environmentalists are always wary when lawmakers talk about altering environmental protection laws for any reason, but especially for efficiency's sake. The gist of the proposed changes is a little less talk, a little more action. Is it possible that that could be a good thing? Well, maybe. However, these days it just makes sense to distrust Republicans on any action they take. Remember, they're the party of social values whose members are implicated in corruption schemes, and they're the party of economic values who have given us a record national debt.

One paragraph in the article caught my eye as to what this is really about: money.

But some timber companies say they have not been able to salvage trees felled by forest fires in time because of the government's elaborate regulations under NEPA.

I read an article just recently about this issue. Oregon State University evidently just concluded a study about logging forests that have been burned by forest fires. The study says that logging increases the chance of more fires in the same place and kills seedlings that have taken root.

Based on test plots in areas that were logged and not logged, the study found abundant seedlings growing, even in areas severely burned, most of which were killed when dead trees were cut down and hauled out. It also found that cutting the dead trees left much more wood on the ground to fuel future fires, even after the logs were hauled away, than leaving the trees standing, unless crews burn the debris.

Of course, that's not what some people want to hear. The logging industry wants those trees.

The Bush administration and timber industry counter that harvesting dead trees provides valuable timber and pays for modern reforestation techniques that produce a new forest decades faster than nature.

Keeping in mind that trees only grow as fast as they grow naturally (there's no HGH for them), as long as trees start growing at the same time, two trees are going to be roughly the same in size in the same amount of time. The argument of the loggers is that the trees will reseed faster when they haul off the dead wood and plant new trees. Of course people have long known that fires enrich the soil with all the nutrients in ash. That's why people burn the rainforests, and evidence of farmers burning trees or grass or whatever to prepare a plot goes back thousands of years. Evidently plants grow plenty fast after a fire. The recent study suggests that forests will reseed themselves just as fast, but with less danger of future fire if left alone.

In any case, I think we can see how this current action against NEPA might be NEPAtism of the Bush administration helping out some friends (or maybe just the Republican party) in the logging industry and other industries whose goals are opposed by environmental groups.