Global Action
These 17 United Nations goals are intended to improve the well-being of people and the planet by 2030.
What are the Sustainable Development Goals?
Signed into law on January 1, 1970, this act requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of proposed major federal actions.
What is the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA?
Factories and power plants are examples of this type of air-emission source, as opposed to cars and trucks.
What are stationary sources?
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act authorized approximately this amount in federal infrastructure funding.
What is $1.1 trillion?
This daily federal publication contains proposed rules, final rules, notices, and executive orders—and tells the public about opportunities to comment.
What is the Federal Register?
Switching this Michigan city’s water source to a river without corrosion control resulted in exposure to lead and other contaminants.
What is Flint?
Adopted in 2015, this agreement seeks to hold global warming well below 2°C above preindustrial levels while pursuing a 1.5°C limit.
What is the Paris Agreement?
This 1974 law authorizes national drinking-water standards covering more than 90 contaminants.
What is the Safe Drinking Water Act?
A pipe, ditch, channel, or other discernible and discrete conveyance that releases pollutants is known by this two-word term.
What is a point source?
Executive Order 12898 directed federal agencies to make this goal part of their missions by addressing disproportionate environmental and health effects.
What is environmental justice?
The use of models, assessments, peer-reviewed literature, and other scientific information as a foundation for government decisions is called this.
What is regulatory science?
After severe storms and Pearl River flooding in 2022, residents of this Mississippi city lost access to potable water.
What is Jackson?
This 1987 international agreement protects the ozone layer by phasing out ozone-depleting substances.
What is the Montreal Protocol?
This 1976 law gives the Environmental Protection Agency authority over the production, importation, use, and disposal of many chemicals.
What is the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA?
Under the Clean Water Act, a discharger generally must obtain this permit before releasing pollutants from a point source into U.S. waters.
What is a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit, or NPDES permit?
Established through Executive Order 14008, this initiative aims to direct 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments to disadvantaged communities.
What is the Justice40 Initiative?
In federal budgeting, this is the process of setting aside money for specific government programs and projects.
What are appropriations?
A proposed international bridge expected to add more than 10,000 trucks per day raised environmental-justice concerns in this Detroit neighborhood.
What is Southwest Detroit?
This convention seeks to prevent wealthy nations from exporting hazardous waste to poorer nations with inadequate facilities and regulations.
What is the Basel Convention?
This law created a federal Superfund for addressing abandoned hazardous-waste sites and environmental releases.
What is the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, or CERCLA?
Ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and lead are the six major pollutants regulated by these standards.
What are the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, or NAAQS?
California’s AB617 uses these community-led bodies to help develop local air-monitoring and emissions-reduction plans.
What are community steering committees?
This “better-safe-than-sorry” principle favors preventive action even when scientific uncertainty remains.
What is the Precautionary Principle?
Unlike the United States’ original TSCA framework, this European Union chemical policy requires manufacturers to provide comprehensive chemical data.
What is Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals, or REACH?
This 1992 convention is the parent treaty of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.
What is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC?
The 2016 amendments that substantially revised TSCA are named for this U.S. senator.
Who is Frank R. Lautenberg?
This Clean Air Act provision requires upwind states to ensure their pollution does not prevent downwind states from meeting air-quality standards.
What is the Good Neighbor provision?
New Jersey’s S232/A2212 requires its environmental agency to consider cumulative public-health and environmental risks when permitting projects in these communities.
What are overburdened communities?
Elizabeth Mullin’s three strategies for effective public comments are to “pound” these three things.
What are the law, the facts, and the table?
Environmental-justice advocates use this term for apparently beneficial policies that fail to address root causes and may perpetuate inequities.
What are false solutions?