Green Machine.

Building permits are issued by agencies staffed by civil servants and area experts, and any objections that don't cite CEQA are decided by a board of permit appeals - also staffed by experts. In accordance with CEQA, the developer had conducted a 1,000-page environmental impact report, which found that the project's only "significant" impact would be a less than 1 percent increase in shadows on nearby plazas. IN THE LATE '60s and early '70s, when runaway development with little study or oversight led to the draining of the Everglades, the Santa Barbara oil spill, and the Cuyahoga River catching fire, to name but a few catastrophes, the National Environmental Policy Act and its state-level counterparts, like the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), were passed to "create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony.". [Extracted from the article]