#Environmental Service

[robbincenijn]

Stena / Future Vision / w. GiantAnt / 2019

[siglo-group]

Siglo Group - Ecologists association in Austin, Texas

Siglo Group integrates ecology into land management and design, community planning, and geographic assessments.

[environmental-service]

Environmental Services - Key to a Wonderful World

Our lives have been made easier by the new technology we have now because of our great intelligence. We all work hard to have a good life and enjoy all the things we can have. Having huge houses full of appliances is the most comfortable thing for us because with it all we have to do is to relax and live the life to the fullest. We can even go to beautiful places no matter how far it is from our homes because of different ways transportation that we had invented. Humans are indeed the most intelligent being in this world that deserves to have the best way of living this life.

New technology had changed our lifestyle like our ways of transportation. We can travel by land, sea or air depending on what we like and what we can afford. Appliances have also been invented to give ease in our daily works at home and at work. We can even have enough time to spend with our family like having a vacation with them in the most beautiful places. On the other hand, more destructive disasters are occurring because of the effects of the new technology in the environment. Some of it has marked in our memories like the tsunami in Thailand and lately the earthquake in Haiti. These things should give us a clue to realize what we would do now to prevent more disasters to occur.

Environmental Service

Seeing through the photos and videos of the worst effects of the disasters both in humans and in the nature will make us think of why did this happen and what can we do to resolve this. Helping the victims is what we can do after the disasters happen but the fact is that we can help them more before a tremendous thing would happen. We can join non-profit organizations in their activities for a better world like providing good environmental services that our mother nature needs now.

 It is good that we are worrying with others but what we should also be worrying about is the worst problem of our planet. Our environment needs our help in retaining its healthiness because our fault caused this destruction. Some of us are engaged in illegal logging which cause flash floods, dynamite fishing that caused polluted water and most of all our carelessness even caused spills that are harmful to all living things. These things we did can make help us earn a lot but it causes a lot of trouble and worst of it is that our family can even be a victim of these disasters. Vist https://www.ecowastecompacting.com/

  Now is the time for us to act to prevent more tremendous things to happen because we do not know it can be worst. There are a lot of ways we can do which are part of environmental services that our environment needs. Housewives can practice proper disposal at home and recycle the non-biodegradable garbage. Teens can now join some organizations in their eco-friendly activities while factories can practice proper disposal of toxic wastes. By this, our environment will be clean and we can enjoy bountiful fruits and vegetables. We can even have great amount of potable water and prevent epidemic illnesses as well. Healthy environment can cause a healthy body and life to all of us. All we need to do is help the planet because it provides all we need to live.

Resource

[my-article-cloud]

Environmental Services - Are They Viable Options for Farmers and Ranchers?

Environmental services are highly valued by our society even though most of them fall into the realm of being for the public good. As such people can usually get them without having to pay for them.

 Ranchers and farmers in the United States bring a diverse assortment of commodities for fuels, fibers and foods in response to signals that are generated by the market. In addition, farms and ranches contain significant quantities of natural resources that may encompass a number of environmental services that include cleaner water and air, improved wildlife habitat, and flood control.

 However, since ranchers and farmers do not reap any financial benefits if they produce these commodities they tend to focus on other profit-making areas and generally under provide these types of services.

 However, although there may not be any immediate financial gain, farmers may often unintentionally produce such services by maintaining their wetlands, grasslands, and/or forests instead of converting them to croplands. They also often unwittingly provide environmental services by integrating production or conservation practices that increase their bottom lines while improving environmental performance.

 Even though our society puts a high value on these services most farmers can't financially benefit from them because these services are in the realm of the public good. Therefore they don't intentionally produce them.

Environmental Service

Consequently, there aren't any markets that occur naturally for environmental services.

 However, if environmental services could be sold along the same lines as other commodities then ranchers and farmers would undoubtedly invest more of their time and resources to better maintain their woodlots, wildlife habitats, and wetlands. And they would be less prone to turning this land into cropland or grazing land.

 The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) has expressed a lot of interest in markets that could be created to could provide both environmental services and environmental quality. The USDA looks at these as supplements to any existing conservation program rather than as replacements to such programs.

 They also believe that they could potentially be an additional income source for ranchers and farmers.

 One of the challenges faced by the USDA is that the vast majority of farmers (and other business people) are reluctant to adopt any new practices if the potential returns aren't certain.

 By their very nature environmental services are difficult to observe. For example, how do you determine the nutrient filtering capacities of wetlands? Or how can you determine the sequestration of greenhouse gases by adopting conservation tillage? Such uncertainty vis-à-vis the quality and quantity of services that farmers and ranchers can produce are common problems that will have to be overcome before economically viable environmental service systems can be put into place.

Resource

 Environmental Services - Key to a Wonderful World

Doing Environmental Services In Five Easy Ways

Why Environmental Services Are Needed

Environmental Services - Gift To The Nature

Environmental Services

[share-your-video]

Eco Waste Compacting!

Recommended: Eco Waste Compacting compacts your dumpster waste to save you up to 40% on dumpster fees. It reduces the amount of roll-off services. The fewer bins you haul, the more money you save. It Compacting your trash is what we do. We specialize in mobile dumpster compacting. We come to you with our patented 3 ton mobile compaction truck and complete safe and effective compactions of your dumpsters.

https://www.ecowastecompacting.com/

[byler-alarmist]

Do people know most paper receipts are harmful to their health?

I'm going to get up on my soapbox for a minute, but do people realize how pretty much everyone is being overloaded with endocrine disruptors like BPA/BPS on a near-daily basis??

I don't think many people understand that ever since most of the world transitioned to thermal paper receipts (cheaper than ink), almost every receipt you handle from the gas station to the grocery store to the Square terminal printer at the local co-op is coated with Bisphenol-A (BPA) or its chemical cousin Bisphenol-S (BPS).

These chemicals have not only been proven to cause reproductive harm to human and animals, they've also been linked to obesity and attention disorders.

Not sure if your receipt is a thermal receipt? If you scratch it with a coin and it turns dark, it's thermal.

BPA/BPS can enter the skin to a depth such that it is no longer removable by washing hands. When taking hold of a receipt consisting of thermal printing paper for five seconds, roughly 1 μg BPA is transferred to the forefinger and the middle finger. If the skin is dry or greasy, it is about ten times more. 

Think of how many receipts you handle every day. It's even worse for cashiers and tellers, who may handle hundreds in a single shift. It is also a class issue, since many people who work retail and food service are lower-income and will suffer worse health consequences over time from the near-constant exposure.

Not only that, receipts printed with thermal ink are NOT recyclable, as they pollute the rest of the paper products with the chemicals.

People don't know this and recycle them anyway, so when you buy that "green" toilet paper that says "100% recycled"? Yup, you are probably wiping your most sensitive areas with those same chemicals (for this reason, I buy bamboo or sugarcane toilet paper as a sustainable alternative to recycled paper).

This page from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has some good links if you want to learn more.

As consumers, we need to demand better from our businesses and from our governments. We need regulation of these chemicals yesterday.

If you are a buyer or decision-maker for a business, the link above also contains a shortlist of receipt paper manufacturers that are phenol-free.

If you work at a register, ask customers if they want a receipt. If they don't and you can end the transaction without printing one, don't print one!

As a consumer, fold receipts with the ink on the inside, since that's where the coating is. Some more good tips here.

And whatever you do, DO NOT RECYCLE THERMAL RECEIPTS

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

In late May, 19 Republican attorneys general filed a complaint with the Supreme Court asking it to block climate change lawsuits seeking to recoup damages from fossil fuel companies.

All of the state attorneys general who participated in the legal action are members of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), which runs a cash-for-influence operation that coordinates the official actions of these GOP state AGs and sells its corporate funders access to them and their staff. The majority of all state attorneys general are listed as members of RAGA.

Where does RAGA get most of its funding? From the very same fossil fuel industry interests that its suit seeks to defend. In fact, the industry has pumped nearly $5.8 million into RAGA’s campaign coffers since Biden was elected in 2020.

The recent Supreme Court complaint has been deemed “highly unusual” by legal experts.

The attorneys general claim that Democratic states, which are bringing the climate-related suits at issue in state courts, are effectively trying to regulate interstate emissions or commerce, which are under the sole purview of the federal government. Fossil fuel companies have unsuccessfully made similar arguments in their own defense.

RAGA’s official actions — and those of its member attorneys general — closely align with the goals of its biggest donors.

The group, a registered political nonprofit that can raise unlimited amounts of cash from individuals and corporations, solicits annual membership fees from corporate donors in exchange for allowing those donors to shape legal policy via briefings and other interactions with member attorneys general.

A Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) analysis of IRS filings since November 24, 2020 shows that Koch Industries (which recently rebranded) leads as the largest fossil fuel industry donor to RAGA, having donated $1.3 million between 2021 and June 2024.

Other large donors include:

• American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil and gas industry’s largest trade association

• Southern Company Services, a gas and electric utility holding company

• Valero Services, a petroleum refiner

• NextEra Energy Resources, which runs both renewable and natural gas operations

• Anschutz Corporation, a Denver-based oil and gas company

• American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a major trade organization

• Exxon Mobil, one of the largest fossil fuel multinationals in the world

• National Mining Association, the leading coal and mineral industry trade organization

• American Chemical Council, which represents major petrochemical producers and refiners

Many of these donors are being sued for deceiving the public about the role fossil fuels play in worsening climate change: many states — including California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island — as well as local governments — such as the city of Chicago and counties in Oregon and Pennsylvania — have all filed suits against a mix of fossil fuel companies and their industry groups. In the cases brought by New York and Massachusetts, ExxonMobil found support from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief in defense of the corporation.

Paxton has accepted $5.2 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry over the past 10 years, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets and reviewed by CMD.

Fossil Fuel Contributions to the Republican Attorneys General Association Includes aggregate contributions of $10K or more from the period November 2020 to March 2024.

Note: This funding compilation does not include law firms, front groups, or public relations outfits that work on behalf of fossil fuel clients, many of which use legal shells to shield themselves from outright scrutiny. For example, Koch Industries, through its astroturf operation Americans for Prosperity, has deployed a shell legal firm in a major Supreme Court case designed to dismantle the federal government’s regulatory authority.

CARRYING BIG OIL’S WATER

This is far from the first time RAGA members have banded together to try to defeat clean energy and environmental regulations. In 2014, the New York Times initially reported on how RAGA circulates fossil fuel industry propaganda opposing federal regulations.

The Times investigation revealed thousands of documents exposing how oil and gas companies cozied up to Republican attorneys general to push back against President Obama’s regulatory agenda. “Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their political campaigns,” the investigation found. That effort, which RAGA dubbed the Rule of Law campaign, has since morphed into RAGA’s political action arm, the nonprofit Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF).

Since then, RAGA’s appetite to go to bat for the industry has only grown.

In 2015, less than two weeks after representatives from fossil fuel companies and related trade groups attended a RAGA conference, Republican AGs petitioned federal courts to block the Obama administration’s signature climate proposal, as CMD has previously reported. Additional reporting revealed collusion between Republican AGs and industry lobbyists to defend ExxonMobil and obstruct climate change legislation.

There was also the 2016 secret energy summit that RAGA held in West Virginia with industry leaders, along with private meetings with fossil fuel companies to coordinate how to shield ExxonMobil from legal scrutiny. Later that year, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey — aided by 19 other Republican AGs — successfully brought a case before the court that hobbled Obama’s signature climate plan.

Morrisey is currently leading the Republican effort to take down an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation that targets coal-fired power plants.

Often, the attorneys general bringing these cases share many of the same donors who backed the confirmation of Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices, as pointed out by the New York Times.

And in 2021, Republican attorneys general from 19 states sent a letter to the U.S. Senate committees on Environment and Public Works and on Energy and Natural Resources hoping to persuade senators to vote against additional regulations on highly polluting methane emissions, a leading contributor to global warming.

Since 2022, RLDF’s “ESG Working Group” has been coordinating actions taken by Republican AGs against sustainable investing. Communications from that group obtained by CMD show that it was investigating Morningstar/Sustainalytics and the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. Republican AGs announced investigations into the six largest banks for information on their involvement in the Net-Zero Banking Alliance later that year.

LEGACY OF RIGHT-WING ACTIONS

It’s not only about fossil fuels. Attorneys general who are members of — and financially backed by — RAGA have a long track record of pursuing right-wing agendas. In Mississippi, Attorney General Lynn Fitch helped bring the legal case that ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade. In Texas, Paxton has attempted to overturn the Affordable Care Act and sued the federal government over Title IX civil rights protections, and safeguards for seasonal workers, among other policy irritants to the far Right. With support from fellow Republican AGs, he also led one of many efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In recent years, other pro-corporate major donors have included The Concord Fund, which is controlled by Trump’s “court whisperer” Leonard Leo, Big Tobacco, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform.

[nyxelestia]

Environmental Storytelling

[organicmatter]

vintage woodsy owl poster

[landgraabbed]

i know that generative ai is today's boogeyman but i really wish that people were more precise when discussing it. ai is a huge field that isn't just "create thing based on stolen assets", there's many legitimate uses in medicine, research, etc. your beef is with generative ai, not ai in general.

[robbincenijn]

Stena / Future Vision / w. GiantAnt / 2019

[environmental-service]

Environmental Services

Environmental services are available to keep your family and living space safe. Not only can they protect the condition of your home, but they can help keep your air quality clean and protect your home from molds and asbestos. Here are a few useful environmental services you may be interested in for your home or business.

Environmental Service

 1. Mold remediation is one of the top environmental services there is. Molds are formed in moist areas and should not be left alone or ignored. You cannot wipe or paint over mold to solve the problem. A professional mold remediation service needs to be done if you want to successfully rid your home of the fungus. A few dangers of mold are heightened allergies, an unstable building foundation, and an unhealthy air quality. The last thing you want is to live in a poor air quality, and it is certainly not a condition that should be exposed to infants and small children.

 2. Asbestos abatement is another important environmental service. Asbestos can be found in a number of places like pipes and furnace insulation, floor tiles, old homes, and more. It is a dangerous mineral fiber that is used in a number of fire-retardant insulation materials. It is constantly warned that only a licensed person should remove asbestos from a building. If asbestos is disturbed or improperly removed, serious health risks are at hand. The last thing you want is the fibers getting into your breathing air. Special materials and knowledge of the substance are required in order to safely and thoroughly guarantee the problem is permanently removed from a building.

 3. Being that every building has a certain amount of radon in it; radon mitigation is a very useful service. This is an easy and practical service that helps home and business owners maintain a safe level of radon in their building. Since radon is odorless and colorless, it is nearly impossible to locate the radioactive gas without the help of a trained home inspector. In order to obtain a healthy air quality, there should be no more than 4pCi/L of radon present. Vist https://www.ecowastecompacting.com/

 These are just a few of the top environmental services there are available. It is not worth it to leave mold, radon, or asbestos in your home. Not only can they be hazardous to your health, but the condition of your home is at risk. These are practical services that go a long way to provide a safe living environment.

Resource

[my-article-cloud]

Efficient Environmental Services for Your Community

More people are now aware of the adverse effects of technology to nature. Environmental services have become a growing industry that helps other sectors in maintaining an eco-friendly habitat. Industrial sectors are the largest contributors to waste and damage in our surroundings. If we want to limit industrial wastes, we should be informed on the services we could use.

Environmental Service

As technology progressed, so is the volume of waste we produce. Wastes can be in solid, liquid or gaseous state. All of these are harmful and can negatively affect a person's health. It can grow into a bigger problem if people neglect a growing volume of garbage. This can extend up to neighbouring communities and cause illnesses to residents.

Since we are the cause of this damage to Mother Nature, we are responsible for cleaning up this mess. If we want a better future for our children, we need to start taking steps now. Environmental companies developed different methods to clean, fix and manage wastes. These companies operate on three basic principles: collection, disposal and recycling.

 Collection. Junk removal companies' primary task is to collect waste from a client's address. A crew of trained professionals on waste management services will help you deal with the area's pollution problem. They are fully equipped with the latest gears to keep the staff safe from dangerous chemicals. Companies use trucks built with mixers to collect and shred trash into bits and pieces.

 Disposal. The next step after collecting is finding a proper way to dispose of this garbage. There are different methods of garbage disposal, all of which has their own pros and cons. Separating those that decay from those that does not can help the environment. Biodegradable waste goes to a landfill where it is buried. This in turn can provide nourishment for trees and fruit-bearing plants.

 Incineration is not a regular option anymore as this produces greenhouse gases. These gases cause the destruction of our planet's ozone layer, the only protection we have against ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun.

 Harmful chemicals absorbed by the soil leaves the land barren and unable to sustain life. Petroleum and industrial wastes may even go deeper into the water supply and become a health risk. Environmental services include testing, delineation and excavation of affected dry wells, basements and vaults.

 If a tank filled with harsh chemicals spilt all of its contents by accident, environmental services can cover this damage quickly and effectively.

 Recycling. Those junk that do not decay can be grouped together and remade into their original state. This includes plastic containers, glasswork, aluminium or tin cans, and paper. Artists and craftsmen can use these materials for their work and produce newer items for decoration and other functional uses. Visit https://www.ecowastecompacting.com/

 Waste management services include educating people on how to segregate their wastes. We can prevent massive environmental problems if we start with ourselves and maintain cleanliness wherever we are.

Resource

[tomorrowusa]

More climate news that Republicans will tell you to ignore.

This is by Jeff Masters, a professional meteorologist and co-founder of Weather Underground – a pioneering weather site started in 1995.

September 2023 smashed the record for the most extreme month for heat in Earth’s history, recording the highest departure from average of any month in analyses dating back to 1850, said NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information on October 13. NOAA, NASA, Berkeley Earth, and the European Copernicus Climate Change Service all rated September 2023 as the warmest September on record, crushing the previous September record by a huge margin. And famed climate scientist James Hansen warned today that the world is on the verge of exceeding the 1.5 degree Celsius warming threshold seen as key to protecting the world’s people and ecosystems — a claim still hotly contested within climate science. According to NOAA, September global temperatures spiked to a remarkable 1.44 degrees Celsius (2.59°F) above the 20th-century average. The September 2023 global temperature anomaly of 0.46°C (0.83°F) surpassed the previous record-high monthly anomaly from March 2016 by 0.09°C (0.16°F). Using NASA data, September 2023 was 1.7 degrees Celsius above the temperature of the 1880-1899 period, which is commonly called “preindustrial” (the difference between the 1951-1980 baseline reported on the NASA website and the 1880-1899 period is 0.226°C). This is the first time that a monthly temperature has exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperature threshold in the NASA database.

Rightwingers make up bizarre excuses to keep us using fossil fuels. It's not unexpected that religion would make an appearance on the climate-denial stage. In the 2010s, hate monger Bryan Fisher told listeners and viewers that it was an insult to God not to use fossil fuels.

Back to reality...

The year-to-date period of January-September is the warmest on record globally. According to NOAA’s latest Global Annual Temperature Rankings Outlook and the statistical model it uses, there’s a greater than 99.5% chance of 2023 being the warmest year on record. At the start of this year, few experts foresaw 2023 as being a contender for Earth’s warmest year, as the bulk of El Niño’s warming comes during the second year of each El Niño rather than the first — so it’s possible that 2024 will be even warmer than this year.

There's a climate-denial industrial complex with deep pockets willing to spend big to buy politicians to keep fossil fuel corporations cranking out carbon.

We need to support viable candidates and politicians at every level of government who favor the transition to Earth-friendly energy.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

People in First Nations are 10 times more likely to die in a fire than people from other communities in Canada, according to the Indigenous Fire Marshal Service.

On Saturday, Jan. 28, a 10-year-old girl from the remote Cree community of Peawanuck, Ont. died in a house fire. The incident has renewed calls for a national fire protection strategy to prevent fatal fires in the future.

In an email to CBC News, Indigenous Services Canada said it is working with the Assembly of First Nations to finalize such a strategy.

Its goal would be to "better inform program and policy decision-making and guide federal investments to promote fire protection on reserves and to reduce the risk of fire-related deaths and injuries, as well as infrastructure losses." [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Friday that overturned the landmark “Chevron doctrine” may give Wyoming an advantage when mounting court challenges for and against federal regulations and actions on issues ranging from wildlife and land management to energy development and industrial emissions.

Gov. Mark Gordon and Wyoming’s congressional delegation have hailed the ruling as a clear legal advantage in fighting federal agency actions they don’t like. But the ruling doesn’t necessarily hand Wyoming — or anybody else who sues federal agencies — a clear path to victory in court, according to several Wyoming and out-of-state observers.

Wyoming has much at stake. 48% of the land and 68% of the mineral estate are managed by the federal government and the Equality State has many active grievances against federal agencies now active in the courts. Since 2019, Gordon’s administration has initiated or participated in at least 57 lawsuits either challenging federal natural resources policies, or defending federal positions from litigation brought by public health and conservation groups, according to a list of lawsuits his office provided to WyoFile.

THE CHEVRON DOCTRINE

The Chevron doctrine, established by a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, instructed lower courts to defer to the expertise within agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in their interpretation of carrying out laws passed by Congress. Those laws — like the Endangered Species Act and Clean Air Act — frequently do not reach into the weeds on scientific matters such as what qualifies as critical habitat or measuring ambient air quality, for example.

Under Chevron, deference to federal agencies’ interpretation wasn’t automatic, but applied when an agency attempted to reasonably interpret an ambiguous statute.

Now that the doctrine is overturned, courts may make their own interpretation of congressional intent. But that still won’t erase decades of case law, or statutory precedent, much of which is based on those agencies’ past interpretations and court actions, observers say.

“I think [courts are] going to struggle with it because they don’t have subject-matter expertise in these very intricate, technical aspects of the everyday life of an agency,” Sheridan-based landowner advocacy group Powder River Basin Resource Council Attorney Shannon Anderson said.

POLITICAL REACTION

Gordon, however, hailed what he described as a “victory for common-sense regulatory reform.”

“For years, unelected bureaucrats running federal agencies in Washington D.C. have used [Chevron] ‘deference’ as an excuse to target certain industries based on politics,” Gordon said in a prepared statement Friday. “Wyoming has experienced that firsthand. Limiting their power to overreach is cause for celebration, and this ruling begins that process.”

While not a party to the suit, Wyoming filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which was the basis for overturning the Chevron doctrine. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) and Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyoming) also signed on to another amicus brief in the case.

“I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision to restore decision-making power back to democratically-elected members of Congress just as our Founding Fathers intended rather than allowing D.C. bureaucrats to rule with an iron fist,” Lummis said in a prepared statement.

“Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a major victory for getting Washington out of Wyoming,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) said in a prepared statement. “For too long unelected, unaccountable Washington bureaucrats have gone unchecked.”

Other parties who’ve tracked efforts to overturn the Supreme Court’s 40-year-old precedent aren’t so sure that it’s a clear-cut victory for industry-aligned conservative western states like Wyoming that often rail against federal regulation.

A SMALLER VICTORY?

“I don’t think there’s been a lot of really deep thinking on their side about what [the loss of Chevron] actually means,” said Brett Hartl, an attorney who heads government relations for the Center for Biological Diversity. “They almost were captured by their own ideological premise more than factual reality.”

It’s possible, he said, that the court’s decision will ultimately have the effect of strengthening some environmental laws, though it could be “many years” before the true consequences are made clear.

“Some laws — like the Endangered Species Act — are actually very clear and very strong and have a very obvious meaning,” Hartl said. “Myself … and other organizations would actually argue that, if anything, the Fish and Wildlife Service has interpreted the [Endangered Species Act] weaker than what the law actually requires.”

As courts, instead of federal agencies, take more of a role interpreting environmental statutes, the strengths of the laws themselves may become more important, he said. To illustrate the point, Hartl compared the National Forest Management Act with the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. The former, which is considered a stronger law, governs U.S. Forest Service lands while the latter, perceived as weaker, has bearing on Bureau of Land Management property.

“So the loss of Chevron may make it easier to have protections for Forest Service lands than BLM lands,” Hartl said.

NO IMMEDIATE EFFECTS

Dessa Reimer, a Jackson-based attorney with Holland and Hart, does not foresee “immediate” on-the-ground changes in Wyoming stemming from the high court’s decision. The Chevron standard of review, she pointed out, does not necessarily implicate most federal agency permitting and decision making.

“For example, the Converse County Oil and Gas Project or Chokecherry Wind or the BLM’s Rock Springs RMP: Those aren’t notice-and-comment rulemaking, so when someone challenges those types of agency decisions, Chevron deference was not applied,” she said.

The immediate effect, Reimer believes, relates to how courts review agency rulemaking. “And there has been a slew of agency rulemaking under the Biden Administration coming out this year that’s already been challenged,” she said.

The BLM’s Public Lands Rule is one example. The measure, which puts land conservation on even footing with other land uses, has been targeted by Wyoming and Utah in a legal challenge.

Typically, federal agency rules and actions swing wildly between Democratic and Republican administrations: The EPA’s stance on regional haze and the BLM’s direction on federal coal leasing in the Powder River Basin are prime examples. But within the Supreme Court’s new ruling overturning the Chevron doctrine is the notion that courts might equalize those wild administrative swings in policy direction, according to University of Wyoming College of Law Professor Sam Kalen.

“What SCOTUS did say is, where there has been what’s called statutory precedent that had a court already affirming an interpretation, under a deference standard or not, the court said, ‘We’ll still likely give that stare decisis precedent,'” Kalen told WyoFile. “So it doesn’t automatically mean that all those old cases justify revisiting.”

A lot of litigants will try, however.

“I guarantee you that litigants are going to try to revisit a lot of cases now,” Kalen said. “The way I look at it is as a threat to the administrative state.”