Enforcing environmental regulation via judicialized procedural review has had devastating consequences on America’s ability to build the thing we need. Housing projects are routinely held up by NIMBYs using environmental review laws to sue developers, often under the most ridiculous of pretexts

The other side to this is that it only protects the people wealthy, organized and well connected enough to sue in the first place. This incentives developers to target lower income rental areas to get around this friction. Don’t want to pick a fight with all the nimbys in the affluent neighborhood, just build your luxury apartment complex in the poor rental neighborhood, where the average person doesn’t even know their councilman, much less that there’s gonna be a town hall on whether to build this gentrifying complex that will probably increase your rent. You don’t even have to pay attention to the environmental toll then, what’re they going to do, sue with all their money going to rent and necessities? The landlords, who do have money, don’t give a shit about the long term health of their tenants and don’t live there so they won’t do anything either.