Supreme Court could make it easier for projects to ignore environmental impact

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in ‘Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado’—the first major NEPA dispute before the court in 20 years.

In the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, Dr. Ian Malcolm, a fictional math genius specializing in chaos theory, explains the “butterfly effect,” which holds that tiny actions can lead to big outcomes. “A butterfly flaps its wings in Peking,” Malcolm posits, “and you get rain in Central Park instead of sunshine.”