Florida Audubon Society v. Lloyd M. Bentsen, Secretary of the Treasury, and Margaret Richardson, Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SENTELLE, with whom SILBERMAN, WILLIAMS, GINSBURG, HENDERSON, and RANDOLPH, Circuit Judges, join.

Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge BUCKLEY.

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge ROGERS, with whom EDWARDS, Chief Judge, WALD, and TATEL, Circuit Judges, join.

SENTELLE, Circuit Judge:

The Constitution limits the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary to actual cases or controversies between proper litigants. See Liverpool, New York, & Philadelphia Steam-Ship Co. v. Commissioners of Emigration, 113 U.S. 33, 39, 5 S.Ct. 352, 355, 28 L.Ed. 899 (1885). In order to qualify as a proper litigant, the party bringing the action must, in the least, demonstrate that it has constitutional standing to invoke the authority of an Article III court. See, e.g., Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 99-100, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 1952-53, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968). To have constitutional standing, a party must establish that it has “personally ... suffered some actual or threatened injury,” which may be “fairly ... traced to the challenged action” and is “likely to be redressed by a favorable decision” of the court. Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 472, 102 S.Ct. 752, 758-59, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982) (internal quotations and citations omitted). A party that fails to demonstrate any of these prerequisites cannot seek relief from the federal judiciary.

The fundamental importance of standing has prompted our review in banc' of the district court’s judgment that Diane Jensen, the Florida Audubon Society, the Florida Wildlife Federation, and the Friends of the Earth (“appellants”) cannot sue the Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (“Secretary”) for authorizing a tax credit for the use of a particular alternative fuel additive known as ethyl tertiary butyl ether (“ETBE”) without preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”). Because the district court properly determined that appellants had demonstrated neither a personal injury nor an injury fairly traceable to the challenged acts of the Secretary, we affirm its decision that appellants lacked standing.

BACKGROUND

The National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) generally requires “agencies of the Federal Government” to “include in every ... report on ... major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment” an EIS detailing that effect. See 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C). Regulations implementing this provision allow agencies to categorically exclude a class of actions from the EIS requirement if that class of actions does not “have a significant effect on the human environment.” 40 C.F.R. § 1508.4. In Treasury Directive (“TD”) 75-02, the Secretary of the Treasury concluded that clarifications of tax rules qualify for such a categorical exclusion. See Final Procedures for Implementation of the NEPA Regulations, 45 Fed.Reg. 1828, 1830 (Jan. 8, 1980).

In March 1990, after urging from various members of Congress and comment from other interested parties, the Secretary of the Treasury, through a clarification of an existing rule, expanded a tax credit for the use of certain gasoline-ethanol blends to the use of blends of gasoline and ETBE, which is a fuel additive derived from, but not containing, ethanol. See Alcohol Fuels Credit; Definition of Mixture, 55 Fed.Reg. 8946 (1990) (codified at 26 C.F.R. Part 1). Believing that the ETBE credit fell within the categorical exclusion of TD 75-02, the Secretary did not prepare an EIS before approving the final rule. See Alcohol Fuels Credit, 58 Fed.Reg. at 8947. In the three years after the rule was promulgated, no ETBE production occurred in the United States. 1994, however, finally witnessed the start-up of three plants which, together, may produce up to 3,980 barrels of ETBE per day, or less than one-twentieth of the 102,904 barrels of ethanol that existing facilities can produce daily.

Appellants did not take as long to respond to the new tax credit. In proceedings begun two months after the new regulation was finalized, they sued to permanently enjoin enforcement of the rule and to require the Secretary to prepare an EIS. Upon reviewing cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court concluded that appellants lacked standing.

More precisely, the district court dismissed as “speculative” appellants’ argument that the tax credit, by increasing the market for ETBE, would stimulate production of the corn, sugar cane and sugar beets necessary to make the ethanol from which ETBE is derived, and that this increased crop production would, in turn, necessarily result in more agricultural cultivation, with its accompanying environmental dangers, in regions that border wildlife areas appellants (or then-members) use and enjoy. The court declared that, even if it presumed that the tax credit would increase com and sugar production, appellants had advanced no credible evidence that the increased production would necessarily harm or even occur near the wildlife areas in Michigan, Minnesota, and Florida that appellants visit. Because appellants had not established a geographic nexus between the harm they asserted that the tax credit will likely cause and lands that appellants — or their members — use, the court ruled that appellants had not suffered the particularized injury necessary for standing. The court also found that appellants lacked standing because they had not demonstrated that the tax credit was substantially likely to cause any harm to wildlife areas. The dis-triet court thus granted the Secretary’s motion for summary judgment.

On the initial appeal, a divided panel reversed. The majority held Jensen’s claims that increased corn production might affect specific wildlife areas in Minnesota sufficient to satisfy the geographic nexus requirement. See Florida Audubon Soc. v. Bentsen, 54 F.3d 873, 880-83 (D.C.Cir.1995). It also concluded that appellants demonstrated all the causation necessary for standing because an EIS might prompt the Secretary to “rescind or otherwise modify the ETBE tax credit.” Id. at 882. We subsequently agreed to review the issue of standing in bane. Florida Audubon Soc. v. Bentsen, 64 F.3d 712 (D.C.Cir.1995).

DISCUSSION

Because Article III limits the constitutional role of the federal judiciary to resolving cases and controversies, see, e.g., Chicago & Grand Trunk Railway Co. v. Wellman, 143 U.S. 339, 345, 12 S.Ct. 400, 402, 36 L.Ed. 176 (1892), a showing of standing “is an essential and unchanging” predicate to any exercise of our jurisdiction. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 2136, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992). In order to satisfy the “irreducible constitutional minimum of standing,” a litigant must demonstrate that it has suffered a “concrete and particularized” injury that is: 1) “actual or imminent,” id.; 2) caused by, or fairly traceable to, an act that the litigant challenges in the instant litigation, see Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 752, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 3325, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984); and 3) redressable by the court. See Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 38, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 1924, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976). This set of criteria implements Article III by limiting judicial intervention to only those disputes between adverse parties that are “ ‘in a form ... capable of judicial resolution.’ ” Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 218, 94 S.Ct. 2925, 2930-31, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974) (quoting Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 101, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 1953, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968)).

The two essential components of the injury element of standing roughly illustrate the aims of the entire standing inquiry. A prospective plaintiff must show that it has suffered a concrete and particularized injury in order to convince the court that it is sufficiently involved in the current legal dispute to have a defined and personal stake in the outcome of the litigation — in other words, that it is a “proper” plaintiff. See Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 581, 112 S.Ct. at 2147 (Kennedy, J., concurring). A plaintiff must also show that the particularized injury is at least imminent in order to reduce the possibility that a court might unconstitutionally render an advisory opinion by “deciding a case in which no injury would have occurred at all,” Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 564 n. 2, 112 S.Ct. at 2138 n. 2 (citing Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149, 156-60, 110 S.Ct. 1717, 1723-26, 109 L.Ed.2d 135 (1990); Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 102-06, 103 S.Ct. 1660, 1665-67, 75 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983))— in other words, to help confirm that the judiciary is the proper branch of government to hear the dispute. See Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1, 13, 92 S.Ct. 2318, 2325-26, 33 L.Ed.2d 154 (1972) (quoting Ex Parte Lévitt, 302 U.S. 633, 634, 58 S.Ct. 1, 1, 82 L.Ed. 493 (1937)).

Causation and redressability, see, e.g., Allen, 468 U.S. at 753 n. 19, 104 S.Ct. at 3325-26 n. 19; Von Aulock v. Smith, 720 F.2d 176, 180-81 (D.C.Cir.1983), similarly assure that proper parties have brought their dispute to the proper branch of the federal government. Causation, or “traceability,” see Haitian Refugee Center v. Gracey, 809 F.2d 794, 801 (D.C.Cir.1987) (Opinion of Bork, J.), examines whether it is substantially probable — see, e.g., Kurtz v. Baker, 829 F.2d 1133, 1144 (D.C.Cir.1987) (citing Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 504, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2208, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975)), cert. denied, 486 U.S. 1059, 108 S.Ct. 2831, 100 L.Ed.2d 931 (1988) — that the challenged acts of the defendant, not of some absent third party, will cause the particularized injury of the plaintiff. See Allen, 468 U.S. at 753 n. 19, 104 S.Ct. at 3325 n. 19; California Ass’n of the Physically Handicapped, Inc. v. FCC, 778 F.2d 823, 825 n. 7 (D.C.Cir.1985). Redressability examines whether the relief sought, assuming that the court chooses to grant it,¹ will likely alleviate the particularized injury alleged by the plaintiff. See Simon, 426 U.S. at 38-39, 96 S.Ct. at 1924-25; In Re Thornburgh, 869 F.2d at 1511. Causation may thus be said to focus on whether a particular party is appropriate; redressability, on whether the forum is.

I. How is standing analyzed in procedural-rights cases?

Although the particular nature of a case does not — and cannot — eliminate any of the “irreducible” elements of standing, the assertion of a procedural requirement may compel a court to pay particular attention to those components of standing that ensure the proper parties are before the court. The Supreme Court has recently noted that, in cases in which a party “has been accorded a procedural right to protect his concrete interests,” the primary focus of the standing inquiry is not the imminence or redressability of the injury to the plaintiff, but whether a plaintiff who has suffered personal and particularized injury has sued a defendant who has caused that injury. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 572 n. 7, 112 S.Ct. at 2142 n. 7.

According to Defenders of Wildlife, a plaintiff may have standing to challenge the failure of an agency to abide by a procedural requirement only if that requirement was “designed to protect some threatened concrete interest” of the plaintiff. Id. at 573 n. 8, 112 S.Ct. at 2143 n. 8. In this type of case, which includes suits demanding preparation of an EIS, see, e.g., Public Citizen v. NHTSA, 848 F.2d 256, 270 n. 2 (D.C.Cir.1988) (Silberman, J., dissenting) (noting that NEPA “confers a procedural right”) (emphasis added), in order to show that the interest asserted is more than a mere “general interest [in the alleged procedural violation] common to all members of the public,” Ex Parte Levitt, 302 U.S. at 634, 58 S.Ct. at 1, the plaintiff must show that the government act performed without the procedure in question will cause a distinct risk to a particularized interest of the plaintiff. The mere violation of a procedural requirement thus does not permit any and all persons to sue to enforce the requirement. See Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 572-73, 112 S.Ct. at 2142-43; Schlesinger, 418 U.S. at 223, 94 S.Ct. at 2933; Capital Legal Foundation v. Commodity Credit Corp., 711 F.2d 253, 258-60 (D.C.Cir.1983) (allegation of improper process by an agency does not grant standing absent assertion of some personal injury).

Nor does an alleged procedural violation by the government assure that the government is a proper defendant in a procedural-rights case. Although the Supreme Court has expressly declined to examine whether proper execution of the omitted procedure will likely prompt a modification of the government’s action, see Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 572 n. 7, 112 S.Ct. at 2142 n. 7, the Court has never freed a plaintiff alleging a procedural violation from showing a causal connection between the government action that supposedly required the disregarded procedure and some reasonably increased risk of injury to its particularized interest. See infra section II.B. In fact, as Defenders of Wildlife repeatedly identified the “particularized injury” resulting from the construction of a dam that was licensed without an EIS as part of the injury necessary for EIS standing, see 504 U.S. at 572 n. 7, 112 S.Ct. at 2142 n. 7, that decision confirms that a prospective plaintiff must demonstrate that the defendant caused the particularized injury, and not just the alleged procedural violation. See Douglas County v. Babbitt, 48 F.3d 1495, 1501 n. 6 (9th Cir.1995) (observing that Defenders of Wildlife implied some causal link between the government action implicating the omitted procedure and the injury to the plaintiff’s particularized interest), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 116 S.Ct. 698, 133 L.Ed.2d 655 (1996). To demonstrate standing, then, a procedural-rights plaintiff must show not only that the defendant’s acts omitted some procedural requirement, but also that it is substantially probable that the procedural breach will cause the essential injury to the plaintiffs own interest.

II. Do these appellants demonstrate standing?

Turning to the ease at bar, we note, as a preliminary matter, that, because NEPA does not offer a private right of action for individual plaintiffs seeking to enforce the EIS procedural requirement, a private individual must found his right to sue on some other basis. See, e.g., Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 571-72, 112 S.Ct. at 2142 (finding a procedural right in the citizen-suit provision of the Endangered Species Act); Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, 497 U.S. 871, 882-83, 110 S.Ct. 3177, 3185-86, 111 L.Ed.2d 695 (1990) (noting that the APA may provide a right to sue for final agency actions that omit some procedural requirement). In this ease, appellants have sought to enforce the NEPA procedural requirement through § 10(a) of the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”). See 5 U.S.C. § 702. In order to invoke judicial review of an alleged NEPA violation under the APA, a private individual must be “adversely affected or aggrieved ... within the meaning” of NEPA by some final agency action. National Wildlife Federation, 497 U.S. at 882-83, 883, 110 S.Ct. at 3185, 3186 (quoting 5 U.S.C. § 702 and noting that 5 U.S.C. § 704 denies judicial review under the APA unless the agency action is final). To be adversely affected within NEPA, appellants must at least demonstrate that they can satisfy all constitutional standing requirements and that their particularized injury is to interests of the sort protected by NEPA See Foundation on Economic Trends v. Lyng, 943 F.2d 79, 83 (D.C.Cir.1991); City of Los Angeles v. NHTSA 912 F.2d 478, 483 (D.C.Cir.1990) (Opinion of D.H. Ginsburg, J.).² Because there is no dispute that the agency action involved in this case is final, and that the injury alleged by appellants is of the sort that NEPA was “specifically designed” to protect, see National Wildlife Federation, 497 U.S. at 886, 110 S.Ct. at 3187-88, we are left to review only whether appellants have sufficiently demonstrated all of the traditional components of standing.³

Although, as noted, we assume for purposes of standing that an appellant will ultimately receive the relief sought, this assumption is not dispositive of our standing inquiry. See supra note 1. Standing does not examine whether the challenged tax credit will “significantly affect” the environment in general, which is a key issue on the merits of EIS litigation; see 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C); rather, standing in an EIS matter focuses on whether appellants have shown a particularized environmental interest of theirs that will suffer demonstrably increased risk, and whether the tax credit promulgated by the defendant is substantially likely to cause that demonstrable increase in risk to their particularized interest. See City of Los Angeles, 912 F.2d at 483-84 (opinion of D.H. Ginsburg, J.) (observing that a plaintiff must show a causal connection between the challenged change in federal regulation — and the incremental environmental effect the new regulation would allegedly cause — and the alleged injury to the particularized interests of the plaintiff).

The dissent objects that this standard will make it “virtually impossible” to bring this type of EIS suit, see Dissent at 675, but an inescapable result of any standing doctrine application is that at least some disputes will not receive judicial review. That analysis of a party’s standing should sometimes dictate this result is not a reason to reject either the result or the analysis. See, e.g., Schlesinger, 418 U.S. at 226-27, 228, 94 S.Ct. at 2934-35, 2935; United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 179-80, 94 S.Ct. 2940, 2947-48, 41 L.Ed.2d 678 (1974). Though we will not attempt to describe the various hypothetical in which a party may still demand an EIS, we have no doubt that this standard will not uniformly preclude EIS suits. For instance, the example suggested by the Supreme Court in Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 572 n. 7, 112 S.Ct. at 2142 n. 7 — an EIS suit by a party whose home lies directly upstream of a proposed dam that was approved without an EIS — would still easily clear the standard articulated here. On the other hand, a plaintiff seeking to challenge a governmental action with alleged diverse environmental impacts may have some difficulty meeting this standard, but that difficulty stems from the nature of the plaintiffs claim, which is premised on an alleged injury that is itself difficult to locate, not some flaw in the standard.

For, contrary to the dissent’s assertions, see Dissent at 675, the proof required by the standard is grounded firmly in the law. The standard established by this decision requires the bare minimum necessary to assure that a court hear only EIS disputes over which it may constitutionally maintain jurisdiction. The standard requires a particularized injury — an increased risk to a personal interest of a plaintiff — as demanded by a long line of standing precedent. See, e.g., Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 560-63, 112 S.Ct. at 2136-38; Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 734-35, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 1365-66, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972). It also requires this injury to be demonstrable, a prerequisite necessitated by the well-established rule that a plaintiff must demonstrate standing. See, e.g., Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 561, 112 S.Ct. at 2136-37; Renne v. Geary, 501 U.S. 312, 316, 111 S.Ct. 2331, 2336, 115 L.Ed.2d 288 (1991); Bender v. Williamsport Area School Dist., 475 U.S. 534, 546 & n. 8, 106 S.Ct. 1326, 1333-34 & n. 8, 89 L.Ed.2d 501 (1986). It further requires the plaintiff to show that the demonstrated particularized injury is fairly traceable to the agency act allegedly implicating the EIS. See supra at 664 (citing Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 572 n. 7, 112 S.Ct. at 2142-43 n. 7). And it requires, as well established in our precedent, that this challenged act is substantially probable to cause the demonstrated particularized injury. See, e.g., Kurtz, 829 F.2d at 1143-14. These requirements, while sufficient to maintain the constitutional demand of standing, fall far short of requiring an EIS plaintiff to “conduct the same environmental investigation that he seeks in his suit to compel the agency to undertake.” Dissent at 675 (quoting City of Davis, 521 F.2d at 671).

Appellants in this case premise their claims of particularized injury and causation on a lengthy chain of conjecture. In brief, appellants contend that the tax credit will cause more ETBE production, which in turn will cause more ethanol production, which consequently will cause more production of the corn and sugar necessary for ethanol, which will then cause more agricultural pollution, which, as this pollution is likely to occur on farmland bordering wildlife areas appellants visit, is also likely to harm the areas visited by appellants. As we are reviewing a motion for summary judgment, we require specific facts, not “mere allegations,” to substantiate each leap necessary for standing. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 561, 112 S.Ct. at 2136-37. Because appellants have not adequately demonstrated either an injury to their particularized interest or that defendant’s actions created a “substantial probability” of this injury, see, e.g., Kurtz, 829 F.2d at 1143- 44, we conclude that they lack standing to sue for preparation of an EIS.

A. Did appellants demonstrate injury ?

To demonstrate injury sufficient for standing, appellants must show that the omission or insufficiency of an EIS may cause the agency to overlook the creation of a demonstrable risk not previously measurable (or the demonstrable increase of an existing risk) of serious environmental impacts that imperil appellants’ particularized interest. See City of Los Angeles, 912 F.2d at 483-84 (opinion of D.H. Ginsburg, J.). Previous standards in this area articulated within this circuit have not always clearly stated the need for an EIS plaintiff to show that the government action that implicated the allegedly violated procedural requirement would subject a particularized interest of the plaintiff, rather than the environment in general, to increased risk.

For example, the majority of the panel in City of Los Angeles indicated that, to demonstrate injury sufficient for standing, an EIS plaintiff must show only that the omission of an EIS may cause the agency to overlook a “reasonable risk [of] environmental harm [that] may occur,” as long as that plaintiff had “a sufficient geographical nexus to the site of the challenged project that he may be expected to suffer whatever environmental consequences the project may have.” Id. at 492 (Wald, C.J., for the court). Although this two-pronged expression of the injury threshold in NEPA cases outlines important standing concerns, its structure added an unnecessarily broad inquiry — did the challenged action demonstrably increase the risk of some general environmental harm? — to the more narrow, and more pertinent, standing question of whether the underlying government act demonstrably increased some specific risk of environmental harm to the interests of the plaintiff.

The presence of a particularized risk of injury to the plaintiff’s interests requires even more exacting scrutiny when the challenged government action is not one located at a particular “site,” as was the action in the ease from which City of Los Angeles imported its standard, see City of Davis v. Coleman, 521 F.2d 661, 671 (9th Cir.1975), as cited in City of Los Angeles, 912 F.2d at 482, 492, but instead involves a broad rulemaking, as present in City of Los Angeles and this case. In the case of broad rulemaking, a court may not assume that the areas used and enjoyed by a prospective plaintiff will suffer all or any environmental consequences that the rule itself may cause. Nor is it enough, as the dissent wrongly and repeatedly suggests, see Dissent at 679, 680, that a plaintiff show that his particularized interest is merely more likely to sustain injury than some other person’s interest.⁴ Instead, in reviewing an EIS claim, a court must examine whether the demonstrably increased risk of serious environmental harm shown actually threatens the plaintiffs particular interests before that plaintiff may have a particularized injury sufficient for standing.

Appellants thus have rightly sought to demonstrate that the ETBE tax credit poses a demonstrably increased risk of injury to particular wildlife areas in Minnesota, Michigan, and Florida that they, or their members, use and enjoy. Appellants, however, have not demonstrated that individual corn or sugar farmers in these areas will affirmatively respond to the tax credit by significantly increasing production. See, e.g., Florida Audubon Soc., 54 F.3d at 887 (Sentelle, J., dissenting). Instead, appellants, through expert testimony, contend that the tax credit will create a general risk of serious environmental harm by encouraging farmers throughout the United States, and thus, by implication, farmers near the wildlife areas appellants visit, to increase production in a manner that will increase agricultural pollution that, in turn, will damage the wildlife areas.

We cannot treat such speculation as sufficient for standing. See, e.g., Simon, 426 U.S. at 42-46, 96 S.Ct. at 1926-28; United Transportation Union v. ICC, 891 F.2d 908, 911-13 (D.C.Cir.1989), cert. denied, 497 U.S. 1024, 110 S.Ct. 3271, 111 L.Ed.2d 781 (1990) (rejecting allegations that cannot be described as true or false as too speculative for standing). Whatever the possible environmental impacts of the ETBE tax credit, appellants have not provided competent evidence that corn farmers in particular areas of Minnesota or Michigan or sugar producers in particular regions of Florida will grow their crops in such a fashion as to lead to greater quantities of pesticide use and erosion than already exist so as to pose a significantly increased risk to the lands used by these appellants because of the presence of that credit. Even if the coming years witness some increased cultivation of land in the United States, appellants have not demonstrated that this increased cultivation would occur on land adjacent to the property in Minnesota or elsewhere that any appellants visit. Because appellants have not demonstrated such a geographic nexus to any asserted environmental injury, we cannot hold that they have standing to sue.

B. Have appellants demonstrated causation?

As in all cases, standing in an EIS suit requires adequate proof of causation. The conceptual difficulty with this requirement, in this type of case, is that an adequate causal chain must contain at least two links: one connecting the omitted EIS to some substantive government decision that may have been wrongly decided because of the lack of an EIS and one connecting that substantive decision to the plaintiffs particularized injury. The first link in this causal chain foreshadows the issue of redressability. See, e.g., Competitive Enterprise Inst. v. NHTSA, 901 F.2d 107, 113 (D.C.Cir.1990); Mideast Systems and China Civil Const. Saipan Joint Venture, Inc. v. Hodel, 792 F.2d 1172, 1177 (D.C.Cir.1986). The second link addresses what often proves the more critical causation question in this type of case. During past consideration of NEPA standing by panels of this circuit, however, our precedent has largely focused on only the first link of an EIS causal chain, or whether the would-be plaintiff had demonstrated a “reasonable likelihood that if [a federal actor] performed an EIS, it would arrive at a different conclusion about” undertaking the major action at issue. City of Los Angeles, 912 F.2d at 497 (opinion of Wald, C.J., for the court); see also Florida Audubon Soc., 54 F.3d at 882.

This abridged causation analysis is incomplete in that it views the injury at issue in an EIS suit to be, at bottom, only the procedural violation. The ultimate injury this causation analysis tries to link to the defendants’ actions is “the risk that serious environmental harms were overlooked” in promulgating the ETBE tax credit without an EIS. Florida Audubon Soc., 54 F.3d at 883. In other words, the key injury is truly the omission of the EIS, not whether the tax credit will in fact injure the plaintiffs’ particularized interest. See id. at 882. This view of injury, and the view of causation it implies, does not conform to the Supreme Court’s discussion of procedural-rights standing in Defenders of Wildlife.

In Defenders of Wildlife, the Court admitted that a procedural right may permit a litigant to assert that right “without meeting all the normal standards for redressability and immediacy.” 504 U.S. at 572 n. 7, 112 S.Ct. at 2142-43 n. 7. Yet, if the sole injury at issue for “procedural rights” standing was simply some type of procedural violation, even only one that may risk the party’s particularized interest, the Court need not have modified the normal standard of immediacy or redressability. According to any demonstrable application of the “normal” standards, a procedural violation is surely imminent, as it has already happened, and easily redressa-ble, as a court may order the agency to undertake the procedure. By instead suggesting that the “normal standards” do not apply in these cases, the Court verified that the showing of injury necessary to determine whether a procedural-rights plaintiff has standing is not satisfied by the existence of a mere procedural violation, but also requires a “particularized injury” resulting from the government’s substantive action that breached the procedural requirement.

Because the Supreme Court thus considered the “particularized injury” as the normal focus of standing analysis even in procedural-rights cases, we must examine the causal connection between the substantive government action and the asserted injury to the plaintiffs particularized interest. Defenders of Wildlife again confirms our result. See id. That case specifically noted that, in EIS suits, a court should not review redress-ability—whether the preparation of the EIS might alter the decision to license the dam (or, here, grant the tax credit). Yet, that issue resembles what the City of Los Angeles and Florida Audubon Soc. majorities actually examined, albeit under the guise of causation. See, e.g., City of Los Angeles, 912 F.2d at 497 (opinion of Wald, C.J., for the court). We cannot accept that Defenders of Wildlife intended to encourage courts to review under the label “causation” what that same decision indicated they should not review in considering redressability.

To prove causation, a plaintiff seeking the preparation of an EIS must demonstrate that the particularized injury that the plaintiff is suffering or is likely to suffer is fairly traceable to the agency action that implicated the need for an EIS. In other words, unless there is a substantial probability, see Kurtz, 829 F.2d at 1143-44, that the substantive agency action that disregarded a procedural requirement created a demonstrable risk, or caused a demonstrable increase in an existing risk, of injury to the particularized interests of the plaintiff, the plaintiff lacks standing. To the extent City of Los Angeles, 912 F.2d at 495-98 (opinion of Wald, C.J., for the court), or other decisions are inconsistent with this requirement, they are overruled.

In fact, once it is understood that an EIS plaintiff must demonstrate a particularized injury to its personal interests as well as a procedural violation, the necessity of showing causation for that particularized injury becomes self-evident. Not to require that a plaintiff show that its particularized injury resulted from the government action at issue would effectively void the particularized injury requirement. After all, any plaintiff may allege an injury to its own interests if that injury need not be caused by any act of the defendant. Cf. Linda R.S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614, 617, 93 S.Ct. 1146, 1148-49, 35 L.Ed.2d 536 (1973) (emphasizing that the Supreme Court has “steadfastly adhered to the requirement that ... federal plaintiffs must allege some threatened or actual injury resulting from the putatively illegal action”). By thus requiring some real showing of causation, we ensure that NEPA cannot foster a procedural right “in the air,” Giles v. Harris, 189 U.S. 475, 486, 23 S.Ct. 639, 641-42, 47 L.Ed. 909 (1903) (Holmes, J.), or a right that is distinct from any concrete injury. See Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 573 n. 8, 112 S.Ct. at 2143 n. 8.⁵

In this ease, even if we were to assume that appellants have provided specific factual support for the proposition that the wildlife areas they enjoy suffer a demonstrably increased risk of agricultural pollution in the future, appellants have not shown that such particularized injury would be fairly traceable to the passage of the tax credit, as is necessary for standing. See City of Los Angeles, 912 F.2d at 484 (opinion of D.H. Ginsburg, J.); see also Simon, 426 U.S. at 40-42, 96 S.Ct. at 1925-26. For the tax credit to pose a substantial probability of a demonstrably increased risk of particularized environmental damage, the credit must prompt third-party fuel producers to undertake the acquisition of production facilities for ETBE and begin to produce ETBE in such quantities as to increase the demand for ethanol from which the ETBE is derived. This increased demand for ethanol must then not simply displace existing markets for currently-produced ethanol, but in fact increase demand for the agricultural products from which ethanol is made. Again, this demand must not be filled by existing corn or sugar supplies, but instead spur new production of these products by farmers, who must be shown to have increased production at least to some measurable extent because of the tax credit, rather than any one of other innumerable farming considerations, including weather, the availability of credit, and existing subsidy programs. Moreover, any agricultural pollution from this increased production must be demonstrably more damaging than the pollution formerly caused by prior agricultural production or other prior use of land now cultivated because of the ETBE tax credit. Finally, the farmers who have increased production (and pollution) as a result of the tax credit must include farmers in the regions visited by appellants, and they must use techniques or chemicals in such fashion and to such extent as to threaten a demonstrably increased risk of environmental harm to the wildlife areas enjoyed by appellants.

Such a protracted chain of causation fails both because of the uncertainty of several individual links and because of the number of speculative links that must hold for the chain to connect the challenged acts to the asserted particularized injury. Most, if not all, of the individual links in the chain alleged by appellants depend on some allegation that cannot be easily described as true or false; as noted, we routinely refuse to permit such predictive assumptions to establish standing. See United Transportation Union, 891 F.2d at 911-13. Also, most, if not all, of these links inescapably presume certain “independent action[s] of some third party not before th[is] court.” Simon, 426 U.S. at 42, 96 S.Ct. at 1926. The Supreme Court itself has noted the improbability of establishing the necessary likelihood of some result when that result depends on predicting the acts of even a single “interest group” who is unrepresented in the instant litigation, especially when that group, like the farmers, ethanol distributors, or ETBE producers in this case, is actually composed of dozens of individual actors, each of whom must react to other market or regulatory inputs. See id. at 42-46, 96 S.Ct. at 1926-28.

The causal connection asserted by appellants here, however, is far weaker than even the one alleged in Simon. In Simon, only the independent acts of one “interest group”—-hospitals—eliminated the possibility of proving causation. See id. As in a later case in which the Supreme Court denied standing, see Allen, 468 U.S. at 757-59, 104 S.Ct. at 3327-29, these appellants’ causal chain relies on the acts of not one, but several groups of third parties—including ETBE producers, ethanol distributors, and farmers in Florida, Minnesota, and Michigan—none of whom are before this court. The greater number of uncertain links in a causal chain, the less likely it is that the entire chain will hold true. See generally California Ass’n of the Physically Handicapped, Inc., 778 F.2d at 829 n. 4 (Wald, J., dissenting) (explaining that the “double layer” of speculation in Allen made its causal chain far weaker than the chain the Supreme Court rejected in Simon). As in Allen, then, the presence and number of third-party links in this causal chain independently corroborate that appellants’ claim of causation is “entirely speculative” and insufficient for standing. Cf. Simon, 426 U.S. at 46, 96 S.Ct. at 1928 (Stewart, J., concurring) (observing that suits challenging a third party’s taxes are not justiciable, except for First Amendment challenges).

Nor do the theories or testimony advanced by appellants adequately bridge the uncertain ground found in any causal path that rests on the independent acts of third parties. In particular, the statements of various members of Congress prophesying that the new tax rule will stimulate increased domestic agricultural production do not demonstrate causation. We do not defer to the views of the IRS or of Congress or its individual members in determining whether a particular rule will cause injury to a particular plaintiff or as proof of any causal chain necessary for standing. See The Freedom Republicans, Inc. v. FEC, 13 F.3d 412, 417 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 115 S.Ct. 84, 130 L.Ed.2d 36 (1994); Dellums v. NRC, 863 F.2d 968, 978-80 (D.C.Cir.1988). That members of Congress may have agreed with agricultural and alternative fuel interests that the enactment of the ETBE tax credit might increase demand for corn or sugar does not suffice to establish that the credit is substantially likely to stimulate production of ETBE, or that that is substantially likely to stimulate ethanol production, or that that is in turn substantially likely to result in increased domestic agricultural production, or that that is then substantially likely to risk some environmental injury to areas that appellants enjoy or to tap water that appellants use.

We are especially reluctant to blindly accept congressional prophesy as to economic matters when, as here, sound economic reasoning may well suggest a contrary result. In this case, it is far from clear that a tax credit for ETBE will stimulate a demand for ethanol, as ETBE, while made partly of ethanol, is also an ethanol substitute. Other steps along appellants’ causal path also lack support, despite the dissent’s contention to the contrary. See Dissent at 682. For instance, the record does not detail how farmers who might affect these appellants’ interests may use additional agricultural chemicals, which is a critical factor in determining whether these chemicals pose any risk of environmental injury. Jonathan Tol-man, Competitive ENTERPRISE INSTitute, Federal Agricultural Policy: A Harvest of Environmental Abuse 12 (1995), as included in Appellants’ Addendum 2 (“The addition of larger quantities of agricultural chemicals to crops does not directly imply increased environmental harm.”). Nor does any evidence answer the telling fact that, several years after the promulgation of the new rule, ETBE production in the United States still demanded less than two percent of total domestic ethanol production. In the face of such record evidence that the new tax rule has not had a substantial impact even on ETBE production, we cannot credit rosy congressional projections as to the far more tenuous link between the rule and increased agricultural production or appellants’ unconvincing allegations tying the rule to increased agricultural pollution.

Although the dissent claims support for its conclusions from Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Env. Study Group, that decision does not contradict our result. See 438 U.S. 59, 76-77, 98 S.Ct. 2620, 2631-33, 57 L.Ed.2d 595 (1978). The Supreme Court in Duke Power reviewed a lower court’s decision to grant standing to parties challenging an act that limited the liability of companies associated with a nuclear power facility because a nuclear power plant, which harmed the parties, would not have been built in the absence of the act. See id. at 73-74, 98 S.Ct. at 2630-31. The evidence set forth in support of this admittedly stretched chain of causation, however, was still far stronger on several grounds than is the evidence before us. See id. at 75-77, 98 S.Ct. at 2631-33. A brief comment as to a single one of these differences suffices to distinguish Duke Power from this matter. In Duke Power, the challenging parties put forth testimony from Duke Power officials, stating that they would have had to consider withdrawing their plans for new nuclear plants in the absence of the act. See id. at 76-77, 98 S.Ct. at 2632-33. In this ease, plaintiffs have put forward no parallel testimony supporting each step of their attentuated causal path. No corn or sugar farmer in the record has suggested any link between the ETBE tax credit and increasing his level of production, never mind a farmer whose actions would actually harm the interests of the plaintiffs. Even at the very first link of appellants’ chain, a link necessary for the rest of the chain to survive, statements of a prospective ETBE producer instead expressly deny that the tax credit “prompted” his decision to begin ETBE production. Arco Plant in Texas Soon to Produce MTBE or ETBE, Dow Jones Int’l News, Oct. 16, 1995, as included in Appel-lee’s Addendum A. When it is remembered that the evidence in Duke Power was stronger in other respects, and that the Supreme Court in that case was merely reviewing the decision to grant standing for clear error, see Duke Power, 438 U.S. at 77, 98 S.Ct. at 2632-33, it becomes evident that Duke Power does not affect our result here.

And though the chain of causation alleged by appellants is not perceptibly more improbable than that alleged in United States v. Students Challenging Regulatory Agency Procedures (SCRAP), 412 U.S. 669, 93 S.Ct. 2405, 37 L.Ed.2d 254 (1973), that sole case provides little reason to doubt our result. Not only has the Supreme Court itself declared it an outlier, see Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation, 497 U.S. 871, 889, 110 S.Ct. 3177, 3189, 111 L.Ed.2d 695 (1990), but SCRAP was heard on its pleadings, at which point a reviewing court “presumes that general allegations embrace those specific facts that are necessary to support the claim.” Id. As we review a grant of summary judgment here, we need not accept appellants’ alleged chain of events if they are unable to demonstrate competent evidence to support each link. See Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. at 561, 112 S.Ct. at 2136-37.

CONCLUSION

The federal judiciary is not a back-seat Congress nor some sort of super-agency. The absence of standing for these appellants means that they cannot get their foot in the door of the courthouse to pursue their avowed goal of environmental protection. The worthiness of that goal, however, cannot and should not blind the federal judiciary to the strictures of our own constitutional role — the hearing of only actual cases between proper litigants. See Schlesinger, 418 U.S. at 218, 222, 94 S.Ct. at 2930, 2932 (quoting Flast, 392 U.S. at 131, 88 S.Ct. at 1968-69 (Harlan, J., dissenting)).

In this case, appellants have not demonstrated that either they or the defendants are the proper parties for this EIS claim. Unless an EIS plaintiff at least shows, through competent and sufficient evidence, that the omission of an EIS may cause a government actor to overlook a demonstrably increased risk of injury to a personal and particularized environmental interest of the plaintiff, and that there is a substantial probability that the government act allegedly implicating the EIS requirement will cause that demonstrably increased risk of injury, that plaintiff cannot have standing. These appellants, however, have not established that they have suffered or will suffer an injury to their particularized interest. Also and alternatively, appellants have not demonstrated that it is substantially probable that the promulgation of the tax credit would cause any such injury. We thus affirm the district court.

Affirmed.

1 . Because a review of standing does not review the merits of a claim, but the parties and forum involved, see Flast, 392 U.S. at 101, 88 S.Ct. at 1953, our assumption during the standing inquiry that the plaintiff will eventually win the relief he seeks, see, e.g., In Re Thornburgh, 869 F.2d 1503, 1511 (D.C.Cir.1989), does not, on its own, assure that the litigant has satisfied any element of standing. Any assumption as to the outcome of the litigation simply does not resolve the issues critical to a standing inquiry.

2 . Judge D.H. Ginsburg found that certain parties had standing and wrote the opinion of the court on the merits of the claim, but disagreed with the majority on whether one particular plaintiff had standing. See City of Los Angeles, 912 F.2d at 482-85.

3 . We, of course, do not concede — or even need to address — the dissent’s repeated suggestion that our analysis somehow violates “Congress's determination’’ to provide a private cause of action to individuals alleging some procedural lapse under 42 U.S.C. § 4332, see Dissent at 684, as Congress did not expressly create this right in NEPA. See infra note 5. As standing limits congressional authority to order judicial review as well as the courts’ ability to conduct such review, denial of standing cannot be thought to obstruct proper statutory commands.

4 . Such analysis ignores that an injuiy-in-fact sufficient for constitutional standing must demonstrate at least two fundamental characteristics. First, the injury must be demonstrated to be to the particularized interests of the plaintiff. See, e.g., Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 508, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2210, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975). Second, the plaintiff must show that he is not simply injured as is everyone else, lest the injury be too general for court action, and suited instead for political redress. See, e.g., Richardson, 418 U.S. at 176-80, 94 S.Ct. at 2946-48. Although the dissent’s "more likely than the next plaintiff” analysis may have some use in determining whether the injury asserted is too general for standing — and thus aid in determining whether a demonstrated injury satisfies the second requirement — it does not address the critical first criterion. As the “geographic nexus” test at issue here was in fact intended to ensure that a plaintiff's injury met this first criterion of being particularized and personal, an analysis of that test that does not actually require the plaintiff to demonstrate that such particularity must be invalid. That the dissent thinks otherwise perhaps also illustrates that it has not yet come to grips with the injury at issue in determining standing in this type of suit. The injury is not merely the procedural violation, but the harm caused by the underlying act. Part IIB infra. This underlying injury thus must also be particularized, not only to guarantee that the grievance is not too general for constitutional standing, but that the plaintiff truly has a personal stake in the matter.

5 . Our view of causation also protects the purposes of NEPA. The purpose of NEPA’s EIS requirement is to ensure that federal agencies account for environmental costs and effects of a major action before undertaking that action, not to provide individuals who can demonstrate no more than “probable cause” of some risk of environmental injury from federal agency action a means of forcing the agency to discover whether its action, in fact, poses any actual risk of causing such harm. The omission of a private right of action for enforcing the EIS requirement in NEPA, see National Wildlife Federation, 497 U.S. at 882, 110 S.Ct. at 3185, confirms this more sensible view of NEPA and of the showing of causation necessary for EIS standing.