White House Floats New Climate Guidelines/ Social and Enviro Costs of Bakken Oil in ND

White House Floats New Climate Guidelines for Energy, Infrastructure Development

The administration is releasing new plans instructing federal agencies to assess greenhouse-gas emissions as part of a broader effort to address climate change.

See the draft guidelines here:

By Ben Geman  National Journal     Dec. 18, 2014

The White House unveiled draft plans Thursday to ensure that federal agencies evaluate how certain energy, mining, construction, and other projects and policies will affect climate change before they move forward.
 
The White House Council on Environmental Quality plan is meant to guide federal agencies as they review projects under the National Environmental Policy Act, a 44-year-old law that demands analyses of the environmental footprint of various decisions and projects that require federal approval. NEPA reviews are applied to projects and actions such as federal offshore drilling lease sales, highways, construction projects, pipelines, and others.

"Federal agencies, to remain consistent with NEPA, should consider the extent to which a proposed action and its reasonable alternatives contribute to climate change through [greenhouse-gas] emissions and take into account the ways in which a changing climate over the life of the proposed project may alter the overall environmental implications of such actions," the draft plan states.....   read more here

Bringing Home the Bakken

By Kevin Garcia  Brown Political Review  Oct. 22, 2014

.... Acid rain and contaminated water, drug and human trafficking, unacceptable housing, education and sanitation issues: These may be the seeds of a North Dakotan decline, but they are just beginning to hinder the state’s current success. Right now, the state has the highest well-being in the United States, the second-best emotional health, a 2.6 percent unemployment rate and the fourth-best life evaluation. But these numbers have been skewed by the income surge from the boom, and statistics will soon reflect the decreasing quality of life for the swelling ranks of the working class. The question now is whether the state government can put its surplus to good use and maintain high quality-of-life benchmarks through efforts like education, housing assistance, sanitation and crime prevention.....   read more here

 

see also:  Sexual Assault in the Bakken Shale “Man Camps”