The United States is suffering from paralysis. As a nation, we have never lacked ingenuity. But unless we update regulations that impact emerging tech, we risk falling victim to Thomas Edison’s admonition that “vision without execution is hallucination.”
Today’s pace of technological change makes that warning impossible to ignore.
In November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public. The website quickly went viral, and in the following days, anyone with an internet connection could type in a prompt and interact with a technology that would soon reshape daily life as we knew it.
Reactions ranged from fears of a “Terminator”-style doomsday to aspirational hopes of work-free, leisure-filled utopia. Whatever one’s reaction, it was nearly impossible to escape the sense that a Rubicon had been crossed.
Within weeks, nearly every new product seemed to advertise its artificial intelligence capabilities. From cellphones to sunglasses, even consumer gadgets that previously had no reason to be “smart” suddenly were.
Within two months of its launch, ChatGPT had over 100 million active users, making it one of the fastest adopted technologies in history.
In times of upheaval, industries rise and fall quickly. Everyday tools become obsolete almost overnight. Watching it unfold in real time fosters a sense of generational camaraderie with those who lived through previous industrial revolutions. Henry Adams, writing at the turn of the 20th century, might as well have been writing for the circumstances of today: “A law of acceleration, definite and constant as any law of mechanics, cannot be supposed to relax its energy to suit the convenience of man.”
Though the technology may be new, history shows that every transformative breakthrough eventually raises the question of whether a society can adapt its infrastructure to the demands of a new era.
Electricity could not light American homes until transmission and distribution lines connected them to the grid. The age of the automobile could not transform commerce without paved roads. Social media and instant communication were not possible until fiber was laid and servers ran continuously.
The pattern is always the same. Innovation arrives first. But it’s the subsequent infrastructure that determines whether we can reap its rewards.
The infrastructure challenge
The same will be true of artificial intelligence. AI systems require an enormous amount of electricity. According to the Department of Energy’s July 2025 report on grid reliability, peak electricity demand is projected to rise by roughly 115 gigawatts by 2030, increasing from 774 gigawatts to nearly 889 gigawatts.
That increase is roughly equivalent to adding two Californias to the grid in less than a decade.
If the United States is going to rise to the moment, our power generation must scale at a pace the country has not seen in generations. And we must do this without increasing the cost of electricity or decreasing reliability for American families.
The problem is that America’s government permitting framework makes this nearly impossible.
The projects we need routinely spend a decade or more trapped in regulatory limbo. Litigation drags on without any fixed deadline or expectation of resolution. Eventually, investors simply walk away and nothing gets built.
This paralysis stands in contrast to earlier eras of American ambition. The Hoover Dam was authorized in 1928, construction began in 1931, and the project was completed in 1936. The Golden Gate Bridge took four years to build. The Empire State Building was completed in just over a year.
None of these iconic projects could be completed on anything resembling those timelines under today’s permitting regime.
If America wants to live up to its identity as a nation that builds, we need to make some changes.
One of those changes involves the National Environmental Policy Act. When President Richard Nixon signed the bill in 1970, it was initially intended as a procedural statute requiring agencies to review the unquantified environmental consequences of their actions. Fifty years later, NEPA has become the favorite tool of litigious activists with an aesthetic aversion toward energy production, particularly fossil fuels.
The thing is, we don’t need to scrap responsible environmental review to produce the energy we need to power the future. With a few changes, we can both protect the environment and get our nation back to a place where investing in America makes sense.
No one would disagree that protecting historic and cultural sites is a legitimate cause. But permitting laws have increasingly been used to stall projects indefinitely rather than to preserve sites of genuine historic value.
Without those changes, however, the projects we need will continue to face nearly insurmountable hurdles. They face litigation that can be filed years after the fact, often by groups whose standing is dubious at best. They are delayed not because of genuine environmental harm, but because the process practically invites litigants to indefinitely delay until the project is nullified by exhaustion.
To fix this, we must add shot clocks, with firm deadlines for filing challenges and expectations for courts to resolve disputes in a timely manner.
Importantly, lawsuits should be accepted only from those who suffer actual harm. Standing must require a concrete showing of present or imminent irreparable injury directly caused by the permitted action. Courts should not serve as venues for abstract policy objections.
In that spirit, Congress should limit judicial review to issues raised during the public comment process, so that agencies and project sponsors have a fair opportunity to address concerns before litigation begins.
Alas, permitting reform cannot stop with the National Environmental Policy Act. While most conversations are heavily focused on NEPA, many projects face severe delays under the National Historic Preservation Act, notably through the Section 106 consultation process that applies to many federal actions.
Good intentions, real costs
While the purpose of the preservation act is well-meaning, the problem is that the statute has not been updated by Congress in decades, even as its reach has expanded dramatically. No one would disagree that protecting historic and cultural sites is a legitimate cause. But, like other permitting laws, it has increasingly been used to stall projects indefinitely rather than to preserve sites of genuine historic value. One of the most egregious examples of NHPA litigation in recent memory is legal action stopping the construction of the Sunzia transmission line that runs from New Mexico to Arizona, nearly a decade after the initial permit was issued by the Interior Department.
The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which I chair, recently examined these problems in a hearing focused on Section 106 reform. Witnesses, such as Utah State Historic Preservation Officer and archaeologist Christopher Merrit, explained that “the weaponization of procedural statements in the regulations allows any consulting party to dispute a ‘No Adverse Effect’ finding, even when the State Historic Preservation Office concurs, triggering lengthy delays to an already properly executed compliance process.”
To fix this, Congress should clarify the scope of Section 106 review by defining what constitutes an adverse effect and limiting consultation to historic properties directly affected by a project. Once agencies have consulted in good faith and addressed identified impacts, the process should reach a final resolution rather than reopening at each subsequent permitting stage. Our permitting laws were never intended to serve as a perpetual veto, but unfortunately, years of abuse have turned them into exactly that.
Case in point: Under our current framework, individual states can veto natural gas pipelines of national importance under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act. Interstate natural gas pipelines are inherently national infrastructure, and the project proponent should have the option to seek a certification from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Switching this authority would allow projects to move forward without being blocked for reasons completely unrelated to clean water.
Unlocking America’s resources
Ultimately, reforming our permitting laws must facilitate unlocking America’s vast natural resources. Accomplishing this requires reform across the entire permitting system, including how public lands are managed.
Congress has already shown that progress is possible. Last Congress, senators reached bipartisan agreement on geothermal, hardrock mining, and oil and gas provisions in the Energy Permitting Reform Act, some of which were enacted as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Those were meaningful steps forward, but unlocking the full potential of the energy beneath our feet requires going further, especially on how we manage the lands that hold those resources.
America’s public lands have always been meant to serve many purposes over the long term. To live up to that promise, we must reform the Federal Land Policy and Management Act to make amending land management plans easier, giving state and local governments a more meaningful seat at the table and ensuring public lands are managed in ways that serve Americans who live, work and build around them.
The Hoover Dam was completed in eight years. The Golden Gate Bridge took five years to build. The Empire State Building was erected in just over a year. None of these iconic projects could be completed on anything resembling those timelines under today’s permitting regime.
The good news is that there is still time to adapt. Until recently, speeding up the permitting process was one of the few issues capable of uniting Republicans and Democrats. There was broad agreement that a regulatory framework designed for delay is poorly equipped to meet the pressures of a world changing at an exponential pace.
Unfortunately, politics is getting in the way.
On Dec. 22, 2025, just before the Senate recessed for Christmas, key Democratic senators announced they would no longer participate in permitting reform talks, citing the Interior Department’s decision to pause five leases for large-scale offshore wind projects.
This was an unfortunate development. Up to that point, Republicans and Democrats had been working together in good faith, with optimism that we were within reach of an agreement.
I hope Democrats have a change of heart. Permitting reform is too important to be held hostage to momentary political disputes. The obstacles ahead for the nation will not pause for election cycles or strategic walkouts.
Electricity demand will continue to rise regardless. We need to build more generation and transmission to meet that demand.
I implore my Democratic colleagues to come back to the table. My door is open to any member willing to engage in good faith.
The clock is ticking. As Benjamin Franklin warned, “You may delay, but time will not.”
This story appears in the March 2026 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.