On Thursday the Supremes issued a decision on the National Environmental Policy Act and Environmental Impact Statements that will greatly facilitate Trump’s efforts to bring energy independence to the nation.

First I have a great deal of knowledge about EIS because one job I had as a faculty member at UF law school was to supervise a federal grant program summarizing and cataloging EIS on projects impacting the sea and coastal development.

The case is Seven Counties versus Eagle County. The issue at stake was approval of an 88 mile railroad line connecting a very oil rich area in Utah to the main railroads that would connect with refineries on the Gulf Coast. It was approved but then challenged and disapproved because it didn’t take into account the potential environmental impacts that might result from the fact that the railroad might result in increased oil and gas mining in Utah and increased refining on the Gulf Coast and other secondary possibilities.

The Supremes in an 8-0 opinion with Gorsuch abstaining, and I don’t know why and didn’t look it up but I did read the opinion, held that agencies when considering potential environmental impacts of infrastructure projects only need to consider potential impacts of the project itself and not potential upstream or downstream impacts. And this is a great result. These out of control judges have used impact statements to manufacture all kinds of nonsense to delay and cancel projects. Now the involved agency only needs to consider the actual impacts of the project involved, not other factors, and if they do that courts can not second guess their approval of projects.