After Cumulative Effects: Seven County, Keystone XL, and NEPA’s Shrinking Horizon

April 2026
Citation:
56
ELR 10123
Issue
2
Author
Robert Paterson

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County reorients NEPA’s scope, curtailing cumulative effects analysis by redefining it through a jurisdictional lens. For fossil fuel infrastructure projects where the most significant environmental impacts occur upstream or downstream from the infrastructure itself, Seven County severely constrains climate change-related impact analysis. This Comment advances three linked claims: (1) that Seven County replaces NEPA’s foreseeability-based “hard look” with a jurisdictional screen; (2) that this substitution erodes cumulative effects analysis as required by NEPA and historically implemented by CEQ; and (3) that the doctrine is outcome-determinative for fossil fuel infrastructure where consequential effects occur outside the permitting agency’s organic authority.

Robert Paterson, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Environmental Planning at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Architecture.