It’s very hard to understand why the current administration has such an urge to roll back environmental regulations. I grew up in a time when rivers were red or green depending on what type of leather the factory upstream was processing at the time. The only fish you could see were dead. Breathing in cities was hard. Environmental regulation is a big success story that improved the lives of countless people while companies could still make enormous profits. Why try to roll that back? If anything we should get even more clean.
I meant like literally. Where does the money that is spent meeting environmental regulations go? The money is not just being burnt up. It's going to a different segment of the economy, I'm just not versed in what that means or looks like.
Oh, you meant the environmental regulation money? I misread your question, I thought you were talking about the money saved by the oil and gas companies when they removed said regulation.
Anyway, that money is generally spent on equipment and processes to clean up after whatever the company is doing. Collection pods for contaminated water. Scrubbers on chimneys. Direct pay to inspectors to come out and make sure you aren't trying to cheat to save money. That sort of thing. It spreads out across the entire economy. Markets and industries are formed to support finding the cheapest way to keep the processes in question from damaging the environment and requiring much more expensive cleanup (think EPA superfund and class action lawsuits over medical conditions suffered by nearby communities) after the fact.
For some strange reason Fox News and AM Talk Radio never mention that part. So the message never reaches the base. The only people who would mention it are the untrustworthy lieberal media.
The Right is dominated in media silos. AM radio is almost exclusively right wing talk these days. FoxNews is 100% propaganda and almost all fiction. Avg people who support the GOP are encrusted inside this silo. They do not listen, watch, read or see any objective news. Its 100% partisan political propaganda. So getting the message through isnt possible. Its about as biased as anything in history. But they'll tell you that they're oppressed by the Liberal Media... Facts be damned.
So it takes a whole bunch of resources that could be used to produce other things and uses them to produce chimney scrubbers, collection ponds, etc. Not only people's time, but also a bunch of raw materials, equipment, etc, all of which then cannot be used for things other than emissions compliance.
You either pay for the cost up front or down the road when that environmental contamination catches up to you.
The EPA is rightfully tired of cleaning up industry messes and would much prefer that the pollution not happen in the first place. It's much easier and cheaper to clean up that way.
So these regulations are all about preventing companies from passing on the costs of cleanup to the general public. One way or another you're paying for it, and it's much less expensive in almost every case if you pay for it up front. The only problem is that the free market doesn't price in externalities unless you force it to (via regulation) so the pollute now and let the public clean it up later approach is always going to win in an unregulated market.
I'd say it goes further than that. With the polarisation of American politics, rolling back environmental regulations is politically popular with one cohort of voters just because it's unpopular with the "other" side.
Repealing regulations (not necessarily environmental ones) was popular enough to be a Trump campaign promise, after all.
I've seen someone's opinion basically summarized as "a lot of these [Trump / republican] supporters don't really reason through anything political beyond "fuck liberals". As long as it opposes the damn liberals and whatever they want, it's all good, no matter how illogical, self-harming, or clueless in any other regard.
When someone summarizes their political rivals' positions as "they're just nasty people who hate me and want to oppose anything I like", I don't think you should put a tremendous amount of stock in that.
Opinion columns are not particularly strong support for any position. Other than some secondary references in the piece, I don't see anything factual there, just the writer's take on each side baiting the other.
This would be an easier argument to make if one side wasn't making an issue out of wearing masks, fighting for their right to spread a deadly disease to others, and in some cases actually attacking people for asking them to wear masks.
Or the other side trying to force funding marijuana legalization and abortion clinics by holding stimulus relief and supplemental unemployment benefits hostage.
Nowhere in the democrats bill was there funding for marijuana legalization or abortion clinics. These are literally fake things people are passing around on Facebook. The republicans left people to twist because they are simply greedy.
I dunno. McConnell and Cruz are very proud of their obstructionism. Democrats continue to reach across the aisle, and for what? That doesn't get reciprocated anymore.
Someone on Fox News actually made a bit out of lying about Trump's stance on various things and people would say they agree with Trump's actual stance. I believe there are a number of people on either side that way. They believe the other side is evil and will take the opposite stance on many things just because of that.
> No, it's very easy. Environmental regulations cost money. Lots of money. It's much more profitable to keep these externalities.
I don't think that's the whole story. You also have Zombie Reaganism, which has the Republicans reflexively aping 80s policy as the response to everything, even though it's not the 80s anymore.
They've profited handsomely from Reagan's policies. That's not exclusive to Republicans either; I think dems would be quite incensed about Hunter Biden in a different political context.
Money can't buy cures for many pollution causing diseases. We should require that those in charge of these regulations must periodically drink from the 'treated' water output which tests as most polluted. Likewise they must breath air samples from the communities that test as most polluted.
Once it's personal, and they can't buy their way out then improvements can be maintained.
> ”Environmental regulations cost money. Lots of money.”
That’s a narrow-minded view. Sure, environmental regulations cost oil and gas companies money.
But this fails to consider the external costs to society: increased healthcare costs and reduced life expectancy due to air and water pollution, future costs of global heating including property damage to coastal cities from rising sea levels, agricultural regions becoming less productive, etc.
Secondly, reducing dependence on fossil fuels (many of which are imported, even in America) will improve energy security and reduce energy costs in the long term. Great economic benefits, as well as environmental ones.
Of course. But is it government’s role solely to boost oil company profits?
Or should they consider these against long-term costs incurred by everyone? Surely there is a middle ground that works for everyone. It’s not as if major oil companies are struggling to survive.
Those long term costs will be a political disadvantage for liberals, as they will give the GOP plenty of talking points about how they want to take away good honest coal mining jobs. This is the long game in action. Force liberals to make the hard decisions to save the planet, then completely own them with propaganda about those decisions.
It's a winning strategy. Not only in the US, but across most of the Anglo sphere. As an added bonus it provides huge payoffs to billionaires at the cost of the poor and middle class.
”Not only in the US, but across most of the Anglo sphere.”
Not in the UK. Coal use has plummeted by 84% in 5 years (84 million tonnes in 2014 to 8 million tonnes in 2019), while renewable energy has been hugely expanded. All under “right wing” (Conservative) governments.
Coal use has collapsed in the US too entirely for economic reasons, but it doesn't stop the politicians from making ads about how liberals are coming for your jobs because they hate your way of life and airing them constantly in rural areas.
The Right was smart to latch onto coal. It will never come back, so they can complain about it forever. We all know that they love to sell nostalgia.
And their target demographic isn't too interested in facts, so they'll never learn the reality that it was deregulation lead to a natural gas boom, which lead to the free market dealing the death blow to coal. So they can keep selling evil job killing regulations as the reason for the decline of everything great in this country.
Renewables get the headlines, but those coal plants are mostly being replaced with natural gas ones. The media reports "renewables overtake coal for the first time," which gives the false impression that solar and wind are displacing coal. But that's not what's really happening, which is that those former coal plants now burn natural gas because it's cheaper.
> "Renewables get the headlines, but those coal plants are mostly being replaced with natural gas ones."
Not true in the UK. Natural gas use has also declined, albeit only slightly, in recent years. There has also been a net loss of capacity in the past decade as more old NG plants have closed than new ones built.
Meanwhile, coal, which produced 42% of all UK electricity as recently as 2012, has almost gone to zero while renewables (the bulk of which is offshore wind) are at 37% - and growing every year.
Sorry, I thought it was clear that my comments were specific to the USA, where 103 out of 121 coal plants decommissioned since 2011 have been replaced with natural gas plants.
While this specific one doesn't work in the UK, there is a wider thread of "regulation bad" in right-wing British politics; it was a major factor in the Brexit vote.
> That’s a narrow-minded view. Sure, environmental regulations cost oil and gas companies money.
And guess who is making donations, hiring nephews, and making up parts of portfolios. What the parent was saying is that externalities don't matter to these people because we don't value externalities as a society.
Yes, pollution regulation is a classic example of something which has a huge cost on one group (business) and a minor benefit to a large group (everyone else), but the minority is much more motivated. It is an unfortunate byproduct of our government with special interests.
The major anti-pollution regulations were largely passed against a background of dead and extremely sick people, which concentrated the public's mind. Death and injury from pollution is now greatly reduced and less visible where it does occur, and it's less on peoples' minds, so there's a risk of backsliding.
tragically, markets have a way to settle, such that costs rise to match cash flows.. so the easy (and true) accusation "It's much more profitable to keep these externalities" is part of the story.. profit is sometimes over decades with low margins and upfront investment (coal) .. telling people that the coal barons are simply paying their long term loans and legally-mandated retirement benefits, is not as appealing to outrage the public..
I agree that it is apparently a bonding exercise among certain capital-crowds to dismantle and mock environmental protections. The real world works like that.
Because people helped by something not happening don't put huge amounts of money into Republican politics and companies that have to 'properly' [0] dispose of their toxic byproducts have money to spend.
It's a problem with collective action on a lot of climate problems in particular; the benefits are in the future and dilute while the costs are concentrated and immediate. Because of that there's a LOT of money available to push off imposing those costs and no direct money available to push for imposing them.
[0] Giant air quotes here because the approved disposal method is usually a poorly maintained pond that leeches into the water anyways.
Environmental harm should be one place where the corporate veil should be pierced and people should be held personally liable for their actions and decisions.
If someone dumped tons of deadly chemicals into a river for no reason, and those actions resulted in the long-term deaths of thousands, they'd go to jail. But if that person does the same thing for profit, as an executive of a massive conglomerate, nothing happens to them.
A big issue with pollution cases is it's hard to definitively prove that some pollution event cause a particular person's disease so there's always long drawn out suits where the corporations hold a majority of the power because they have so much more money.
As for piercing the veil it's rarely super clear that someone high up actually forced the pollution to happen. All the internal policies and emails usually say the right thing but the incentives, pressures and money all put pressure to people down the ladder to skirt the rules the inevitably leads to disaster.
> It’s very hard to understand why the current administration has such an urge to roll back environmental regulations.
There's a part of it that's performative. Liberals care about the environment and want to impose regulations, ergo conservatives should disregard the environment and should roll back regulations.
Of course, this is a ridiculous line of reasoning. But it's not meant to convince anyone who would recognize how illogical that is.
It's very easy to understand if you know what "coal rolling" is. As with many of the administration's actions, this is just Executive-level coal rolling.
Resource extraction provides the cash that is the bread and butter of reactionary and conservative politics. Every penny of cost removed is a penny gained.
With an administration willing to do anything for a little grift, and demographic changes threatening the governing dynamic (non-hispanic whites will be ~50% of the population by 2030-2040), this is the time to cash in.
It all comes down to their ideology, which in a nutshell comes down to: maximizing profits and (perceived) short-term gains for its core constituency (i.e. business elites) - and where that's not quite possible, at least keep the illusion of an every-expanding, anything goes "free market" system chugging along for another year or two -- at the expense of everyone and everything else -- and all common sense to boot.
The demographics of voting are not so clear-cut (though income is correlated with votes), and the bigger gap is really between male and female voters.[1] There is also abundant evidence that people do not vote in their economic self-interest.[2]
The voters, for the most part, are treated as useful idiots [1]. The real constituents are the business community, which will make or break your candidacy, who not only vote, but more importantly, fund candidates in alignment their own self-interest.
Voting is actually the least effective means of democratic change (It is more effective then sitting at home, and complaining.) The second least effective means of democratic change is getting other people to vote. The most effective means of democratic change is picking the candidates that will be in the running - before voting happens - which can largely be done with dollars.
Yes correlation != causation. As vkou noted, it's who gets to pick the candidates that matters, which leaves us to pick between a giant douche or a turd sandwich.
I wonder if it's really about that. My guess would rather be that they're trying everything they can to boost the economy for a political advantage. Anyone that comes after them that reintroduces regulations will likely see a reduction (or a smaller increase) in the economy, which would allow them to regain power.
This is an utterly specious claim that overlooks the fact that the oil and gas industry is highly competitive and sells commodities. As a result, Exxon, for example, has a net profit margin well under 10%: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/XOM/exxon/profit-m.... (Compare Google at 20%+ https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/prof...)
Because of commodification and competition, almost all cost reductions flow to consumers. If fracking causes the cost of natural gas to drop in half, the producers will capture some profits in the downswing, but most of the benefit will go to consumers who enjoy a large drop in prices. At the same time, oil and gas production creates well-paying jobs for skilled, non-college workers. All that makes policies that make oil and gas products cheaper popular with voters not just popular with "business elites." Indeed, energy prices are highly correlated with both employment rates and Presidential approval ratings: https://seekingalpha.com/article/252704-the-price-of-gas-and...
The "maximizing profits" trope simply doesn't explain why oil and gas has such an outsize influence. If profits are what mattered, the tech sector would have tremendous influence, but it doesn't. It doesn't, because unlike oil and gas it doesn't employ tons of non-college workers in swing states, and the cost of their products doesn't hit everyone in the wallet once a week. Profits are secondary or tertiary at best.
Eh, you basically just verified the point in my opinion..
You try to skirt around the issue saying the profits are maybe being passed down the consumer more than one thinks, ok valid. But the point still remains that everything that is being done is to maximize short term profits / cut short term consumer costs.
>policies that make oil and gas products cheaper popular with voters not just popular with "business elites."
Well.. so what? Of course 95% of people would generally say "MAKE THINGS CHEAPER!" That doesn't mean it should be done.
Besides, you are also making it sound like more people would rather have cheaper gas than a long-sustainable environment. Not so sure you are right on that one.
You linked profits to "short-term gains for its core constituency (i.e. business elites." The notion that voters might be thinking in a short-term way, preferring lower energy costs and lower unemployment in the short term to more sustainable energy policies in the long term, I would agree with that, but I think that's a different argument than what can be fairly derived from your post.
The "maximizing profits" trope simply doesn't explain why o1l and gas has such an outsize influence.
I agree that these kinds of supports (to certain industry sectors) don't always do all that much to maximize their profits (short, let alone long).
The real reason behind them is their symbolic effect. It's the idea of a limitless (and infinitely exploitable) "frontier" -- and the inherent, sacred right of private capital to manage that exploitation, unfettered by regulation -- that they seek to defend with these actions. (That, and the repudiation of basic science on general principles of course).
That some of their donors (who as I'm sure you know will individually benefit many magnitudes of order more than individual consumers will from the temporary increase in economic potential) is a nice plus (icing on the cake) as it were -- but it's not the main driver.
Not only that, as the article point out big companies like Exxon actually supported these methane restrictions - which just so happen to be much harder for their smaller competitors to comply with than the megacorps, meaning that the regulations will reduce competition. Now, of course Exxon insist that they're just doing this because they want to be green, but they not exactly going to come out and say that they like it because they expect it'll increase their profits are they?
> It all comes down to their ideology, which in a nutshell comes down to: maximizing profits and (perceived) short-term gains for its core constituency (i.e. business elites)
That's not it at all. It politics, not ideology.
The fossil fuel industries in the US are huge. They employ millions of people.
But those industries are rightly under attack for causing climate change and generally destroying the environment. If we did the right thing and priced carbon and prohibited pollution then they would be uncompetitive. Those forms of energy would cost more than solar or nuclear or something else and those people would lose their jobs.
Which is what needs to happen, but did you really think they'd go down without a fight? Any politician who wants to win an election in those districts is going to be under pressure to take the "screw the environment to save the oil industry" position. It happens that the oil and coal deposits are disproportionately in red states, so that's where those constituents live and those are the politicians saddled with that voting block.
This is a different motivation than an ideological preference for actual deregulation, which would have them e.g. refusing to regulate the tech industry rather than calling for some ridiculous anti-encryption nonsense.
To get rid of it you need to do one of two things. One option is that when the other team gets in they need to do a better job of completely smashing those industries into smithereens so they no longer represent a powerful constituency (e.g. Obama could have done this but didn't), but they pay a short term cost for doing that. They'd almost certainly lose the next election because in the short term the people whose jobs you just destroyed are going to be angry and resentful. You also run the risk that after you lose the election the other team comes in and undoes what you did.
The other option, and this is the really great one, is that you also pick some evil constituency of the other team and have everyone get together and destroy them both at once, so that politically it cancels out. But that requires a level of bipartisanship that isn't currently very common. It's everybody doing something which is good for the country even though it yields no partisan advantage, and that's not really how modern politicians think, so how do you get it to happen?
I'm not sure how old you are, but it's been a very long time since that was true. You're right that the Clean Water Act was as a big success, but those successes were mostly realized decades ago. At some point, the cost of ever-more stringent environmental regulation outweighs the benefit. In many contexts (e.g., air regulation), there are strong arguments that we are at that point. That is, the cost of incrementally more regulation is very, very high, and the benefit to anyone is very difficult to discern. Whether or not you believe that's true in the context of GHGs largely depends on your overall view of the benefit of mitigating climate change, but your comments seemed directed toward environmental regulation as a whole, and whether any regulation has gone too far.
I would believe that the costs of further clean air improvement are high as measured by annoyance to established people, but not necessarily cost. Where I live, the following would help particulate pollution:
- Eliminating existing grandfathered-in wood burning fireplaces. Costs almost nothing as measured by dollars.
- Emission controls on restaurant exhaust. This is currently required only for restaurants that chat-grill more than a certain amount of beef. Restaurants that smoke up whole blocks grilling pork, lamb, veggies, etc are exempt. These emission controls are not that expensive.
- Outdated fuel-burning devices such as 2-stroke leaf blowers and old cars. Electric leaf blowers are cheap now. Old cars are fun, and banning or taxing them would be unpopular but would cost almost zero dollars.
Where I live, the vast majority of pollution comes from shipping, not residential or light commercial uses. We have arguably the worst traffic in the U.S. in LA, but driving or other individual consumer activities is a drop in the bucket compared the the ecological scarring diesel trucks, LAX and especially the port of LA have done and will continue to do to the region for the foreseeable future, until we change how we fuel transocean shipping and air travel.
That’s a nitrogen oxide plot. NOx isn’t that dependent on how you fuel anything — it’s mostly a function of how you burn it. I don’t know how practical it would be for ships to use a less efficient low-NOx combustion mode when they’re near land.
I would imagine that the average restaurant grill emits very little NOx and a whole lot of PM2.5.
It's not that long ago. I live near by what used to be one of the dirtiest waterways in the the US. Even as recently as the mid-90s, sewage was dumped directly into the waterway and numerous landfills seeped toxic chemicals such as lead and various hydro-carbons into it. The river used to be so toxic that no life beyond worms could inhabit it.
The cleanup for it started in 2006 and is ongoing today. It's only within the past decade that fish finally started swimming in the river. And now the neighborhoods that it runs through are seeing huge increases in property values and new development as this former toxic waste dump is now converted into water-front bike trails and parks.
We absolutely still see the benefits of the Clean Water Act today.
I am in my 50s, so not that crazy old. I also remember industry fighting very improvement, be it safety or environment, tooth and nail and warning of massive job losses. These losses never materialized but instead profits kept flowing and life improved massively for all citizens. To me it's total nonsense and FUD that the cost of tightening up standards is too high. It gets prized into the product and smart companies will find ways to adapt. Companies that refuse to adapt deserve to go under.
That takes care of all the low hanging fruit, then the real work begins. High cost and high benefit regulations are where it starts to get significantly more difficult to find the right balance. I would argue that if this balance doesn't at least lean towards the progress of long term environmental goals, then it is the wrong balance.
That would be wonderful. But it's harder than you think.
For regulations that have low cost and high benefit, the costs are often borne by few people, but the benefits are spread among many. Those who bear the costs scream loudly; those who reap the benefits may be mildly grateful. And those who bear the costs try very hard to make this regulation look like it is high-cost and low-benefit.
And the same is true in reverse for regulations that are high-cost and low-benefit. Those who receive the benefit try very hard (and very loudly) to make it seem that the regulation is low-cost and high-benefit.
This can make it hard to determine which kind of regulation is which, even if you genuinely want to. But regulations are political, and politicians care about votes, not necessarily about costs and benefits. As long as the narrow interests care deeply (and vote accordingly), the politicians are not likely to care about the wider interests.
To those pointing out problems with this position I’d say. The real issue is that no politicians even attempt to take this position. We lack a worthwhile Conservative party.
The only thing that makes sense to me is that these politicians believe they are living in the end times. Whether that's theological end times, environmental end times, or political end times is up for debate, but nothing they do seems to have any kind of sustainability to it. They expect to be dead or out of power soon and are squeezing every last drop while they still can.
My grandfather grew up on a farm and, late in life, retired to a farm. Well, a large portion of the property was a swamp, and if he had his way, he would have tiled that swamp, drained it, and grown corn. But the EPA wouldn't let him, since it was destroying wetlands. So he fulminated against the EPA for not letting him do what he wanted with his land.
And that's why there's a lot of people who hate regulations, especially environmental regulations. They have a very concrete harm from the regulations that they can see (they can't do certain actions), and the benefits are not so easily noticed. Labor regulations, where the benefits are much more easily visible and relatable are likely to have higher support, although I suspect that a large rural constituency wouldn't mind seeing child labor laws repealed.
There's a huge difference between controlling what people do on their own land, and controlling how people affect the broader ecosystem. Burning oil or gas and affecting the atmosphere for everyone is a much larger-scale issue than a local wetland.
(And if you're told you can't turn a swamp into a field, for example, you also ought to get paid for effectively having to maintain a public resource.)
The original comment didn't include that information; that came out later in the thread. The comment implied that the notification happened after it was already owned, as an added restriction.
They didn't pay him for the reduced value of his land, did he? I think that's a lot of the problem with these regulations - the government requires people to abide by them, but does not compensate for them.
The wetlands predated his ownership of the land, and I think the regulations also predated that as well too.
Actually, the local village did offer to buy all the wetlands and a bit more [for road access] to turn into parkland, but my grandparents turned the offer down.
So... he bought cheap land and got mad because he didn't think the rules should apply to him. And then he was too proud to admit that he was wrong. Yeah, that sense of entitlement is a big problem with politics in America.
I wonder are demographics a factor, here. While I'm not sure about the US, in this part of the world the worst visible impacts of pollution peaked in the 50s to early 60s (the Great Smog of London, which killed 4,000 people at the very least and likely over 10,000, was in 1952, for instance). Most voters today probably haven't seen significant personal impact from pollution, so it might not be as frightening.
That said, it also does seem like this narrative of "regulation is ruining everything", as a sort of objection to regulation as a concept without reference to what the regulation is regulation, has seen an uptick recently, between Trumpism and Brexit.
To begin let me caveat that I'm a huge proponent of environmental regulation. That said, most of the regulations Trump is rolling back aren't longstanding ones that produced the cleanups you observed. They're ones the Obama administration rushed through in the last year or two of his presidency, which often had quite sweeping effects or federalized things that had previously been regulated at the state level.
These methane regulations are a good example. Every state that has oil & gas drilling already regulates methane emissions as part of the necessary permits. The Obama EPA enacted a rule to federalize those standards that took effect in March of 2016. It's a duplicative rule that's been operative for about five minutes.
I like Obama a lot, but on the environmental front, he was willing to spend zero political capital to achieve consensus on environmental reforms. To the contrary, he won reelection on a pro-coal and pro-fracking platform! Here is Obama criticizing Romney for standing in front of a coal plant (as Governor) and saying "this plant kills": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXRmlxBDjfE. Here is Obama talking about the how great fracking is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uVGY3sIBsA. He somehow found environmental Jesus around 2015 and rushed through a bunch of regulations at the last minute. But, as such, his successor is perfectly entitled to reverse them just as quickly and easily.
The administration is trying to divorce us from much of our dependency on the global order. Part of this agenda comes with the (un?)fortunate fact that we can no longer economically farm out as many of the negative externalities of our consumption to the third world, if we want to mantain it.
From that perspective, deregulating areas which prevent us from competing in historically outsourced industries with large ecological footprints makes perfect sense to them.
I expect this to have a bet-negative impact on our ecosystems, and quality of life. But with any luck, our more informed public - faced with the real externalities of their lifestyles, will be more readily swayed to adjust their consumption patterns in order to make for a better world.
As someone who is quite anxious about climate change, your comment has done the most to give me hope with regards to these rollbacks. To add, if this brings manufacturing back to USA, maybe also the factories will be less polluting/ghg emitting than the factories they are replacing overseas.
If its good for the masses, Trump will almost certainly do the polar opposite. He has proven to be one of the worst people in our country's history and yet somehow, 100million American's support the guy and his actions. Odd since 99/100 are in direct contrast to their actual needs...
History will not be kind to Trump or to his followers. The coming economic shift with automation are going to eat the last of their jobs and their future. To them, as long as it makes the Left cry, its totally worth destroying everything along the way...
Ignorance is not a virtue as one cannot eat, drink or breath money.
Not if you pay attention at all to national politics, it isn't.
Most companies are not going to go backwards because they know that a second a Democrat is in charge, they're going to be tasked with sticking to tougher regulations. They're not going to backfall after this much time and energy has been spent on the issue.
Trumpism isn't about doing what's smart, though. It's about smiting those who disagree with you and dismantling the regulatory state while strengthening the administrative state by stacking the courts so that Congress is locked out of decision making. They aren't doing it because it's the smart thing to do. They're doing it because Democrats hate it.
In short because it's an easy to people who are acutely harmed by this stuff (even while experiencing unseen long-term benefits).
I have an early-90s Volkswagen van. It came with a very underpowered and fuel-thirsty gas engine. Eventually it could barely make it up the hills around here, and was prohibitively expensive (not to mention unreliable) to use practically.
I replaced the old engine with a modern TDI that gets ~33mpg and is undoubtably cleaner than the 80s-era technology that powered it before. It gave the van a renewed life, keeping it from being crushed and precluding the environmental cost of building a new car. And above all, it solved my problem in a mentally engaging way.
For this I have been rewarded with constant red tape from the state department of air quality and EPA. They test tailpipe opacity while driving it on a set of rollers (if I can find a tech that knows how to drive stick shift). The standard to beat is 20% opaque, which would choke out the room. Despite the LED/opto pair usually measuring less than 1% opaque, it once measured 100% opaque. Think about that for a minute.
I am not the only one to have done something like this, much less the only one to have EPA-mandated portable gas container designs break & spill, EPA-mandated sensor systems break and cost hundreds, etc. I'm not the only one who's been annoyed by land closures (despite having a permit) due to the EPA's concerns of dust entering the air. This is to say nothing of e.g. the farmers who have had increased compliance costs and fines for operating on their own land. A politician coming out against the EPA is an immediate emotional appeal to many people who are somewhat likely to support Trump's ideas to begin with. These people feel they have been hamstrung by the man, and apparently think that mining for uranium in the Grand Canyon is a reasonable price to pay to beat back the EPA a little.
The answer, of course, is to be more sensible in the way that the environment is regulated. No, people should not mine the Grand Canyon (at least not in any way mining is currently conducted). No, a yearly tailpipe opacity test is not an effective way of regulating diesel emissions. But unfortunately, politics turns everything into an emotional appeal that leads to both sides talking past one another. I think the best thing we can do as individuals is honestly try to be better.
Bernie Sanders supported not only going 100% renewables as quickly as possible, but also banning hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") [1]. Silver lining is Aramco and COVID is doing what American's politicians didn't have the fortitude to do: force the scaling down of the US oil and gas industry and the inherent reduction in fossil demand from reducing commuting and air travel (respectively). I'm unsure how anyone can argue for additional oil and gas industry support at this point, with renewables and EVs proven; it's time to treat it like the toxic industry the coal industry is, and transition away from it as fast as possible (not "as fast as commercially reasonable"! as. fast. as. possible, World War 2 mobilization style). [2]
It's annoying we're only making headway in transitioning off of fossil fuels due to luck (cost decline curve of renewables and batteries, making them cheaper than all other fossil and nuclear generation) and a pandemic instead of a concerted effort. "It is what it is."
EDIT: @natch: To refine my point, I don't intend to minimize the work of those performing R&D or implementation of renewables and associated technologies, but that we "lucked out" that we've gotten as far as we have with the minimal amount of resources we've put into the domain. We should be pouring significant amounts of global GDP and productivity into this transition.
....we had a chance to really fix our country with him. I don't know when another candidate of his honesty, consistency and moral caliber will appear again; if ever. My countrymen baffle me ...I really enjoyed phone banking.
Appreciate your efforts, we have lots of work left to do as a nation. Don't give up, every election cycle the demographics shift even further [1] [2] due to younger cohorts aging into voting rights and older cohorts aging out.
Get rested and get ready, under either Trump or Biden, the level of unrest and discontent will be much higher than it was. We will win eventually, but it will look like a slow incremental climb with sudden set backs, followed by bursts of energy and further set backs and crises, until suddenly and shockingly we take power. That's how it always goes.
Violence including riots and political assassinations have massively decreased from the 1960s and 1970s and overall life satisfaction has increased. I realize a revolutionary tone is in the current zeitgeist but it's unlikely to persist if Biden wins. Bernie's hilariously one sided defeat is perhaps the best indicator that most people don't agree with a radical future for the US.
Bernie’s defeat is an indicator that the Democratic Party has no appetite for someone who isn’t an insider, and older voters prefer the status quo. This is clear from exit polls, and is no surprise. Progress occurs one funeral at a time, some people will never change their belief and value systems.
One needs only to look back at the last 100 years of the United States both to see how far we’ve come and far we have to go.
I wouldn't call getting 1000 delegates, winning several states, earning a sizable chunk of the popular vote and a clear 2nd place a "hilariously one sided defeat"
If more democrats stayed in the race after South Carolina instead of all dropping out like flies the day before super tuesday, there is decent chance he would be the nominee right now.
I don't want to diminish that work, but most environmentalists were pretty confident that renewable energy technology would be much harder than it's ended up being. Prior to the last decade, the idea that renewables would be cheaper on a per-KWh basis was hardly a gleam in anyone's eye; environmental discourse focused entirely on why the higher costs of renewables were justified by hidden costs of depending on fossil fuels.
Biden's website lists as his plan: "Requiring aggressive methane pollution limits for new and existing oil and gas operations." https://joebiden.com/climate-plan/
I read the first half and it seems very weak to me. The only actual climate point is unspecified executive orders and a plan to get carbon neutral by 2050 (about 40 years too late and we'll after the end of his 5th term assuming he does that well).
After that, it's road and bridge building and protecting communities of colour.
What will Democrats (this needs to come from Congress, the presidency is basically powerless to make real change here) actually do?
(edit, finished reading, just more about unspecified investment, workers rights, and unmatched American innovation).
Biden's campaign promise to donors is "Nothing will fundamentally change." It is not very likely that what he does in power will have very much to do with the campaign rhetoric.
Which, in its observable impact will be indistinguishable from lip service. The time for lip service was 40 years ago - today, we need aggressive cuts to fossil fuels across the board.
I suggest changing the headline to "outgoing administration continues to sabotage government for next administration as popularity continues to decline during incompetent response to viral pandemic".
Another example of something that was so important they waited until less than 3 months before the election to do it. It hardly needs saying, but this is devastatingly bad environmental and climate policy.
Even the outcome I would prefer isn't going to come anywhere near renewing my confidence. If it happens at all, it will only because a catastrophe made the incumbent's incompetence affect some of his supporters directly -- many of whom will still, in fact, remain supporters.
Even before that, enormous numbers of people were harmed, but they weren't among his supporters. Indeed, for them, the negative outcomes were the desired effect. Even if they lose in the fall, they will continue to prefer to insult, harass, and even defend murder if it's of the people they don't like.
November won't even begin to fix what's wrong. It began long before 2016, and my biggest fear will be that come 2024 they'll elect somebody who is not only hateful, but also competent, and not saddled with a crisis immediately before the election.
It will prevent further backsliding. It would take 20 years or more of significant effort to undo all the damage caused. Look at the ramifications of other "bad" presidents.
This comment works for both sides of the political game, even though I only believe it works for one
The good news is that past Trump administration environmental rollbacks have been so sloppy and so hasty that they've actually ended up being overturned in some courts, and the resulting legal ambiguity that has resulted has actually resulted in fossil fuels projects becoming less viable since they're guaranteed to be tied up in litigation.
Hey, let's ignore this one issue that has majority acceptance across political lines and upwards of 70% Democrat approval because I've got a grudge against it.
You can do what you want, throwaway account. When you get Matt Gaetz in 2024 let me know how it feels. 4 years of more means testing will get you there real quick.
I agree that M4A should be adopted, but disagree that not adopting it is hurting Biden. He's doing spectacularly in both state polls and national polls. Back in Spring this could have been ignored, but the election is less than 3 months away now and he has managed to not just retain his lead, but increase it. There's no reason to rock that boat now with major policy adoptions, in my opinion.
For what it's worth, if Dems manage to gain control of the Senate, then I think President Biden will sign anything that is put in front of him, including an M4A bill. Not doing that would actually cost him the 2024 election.
> Not doing that would actually cost him the 2024 election.
The man has stated he has no interest in running again afterwards. If we're, for whatever reason, taking what he says as truth, then he doesn't need that.
Furthermore, and this is the real important part, the man doesn't base his power upon accountability to the electorate. His base of power showed it's strengrh prior to Super Tuesday. He's riding on the democratic base and whatever reaction there is to Trump, but he's in no way accountable to the electorate.
I don't recall Biden ever making a promise to not seek re-election. I remember him expressing the idea, but mostly within the context of addressing criticisms that he's pretty old. He never committed to it, however.
I cannot think of a single President in recent history who actually refused to run for re-election. Can you?
Regardless of whether he seeks a second term, I don't think he would sabotage the Democratic Party by refusing to sign an M4A bill, if one is put in front of him.
Pretty much everyone knows Biden is senile and that his VP is going to be the real president. So it's a mystery to me why we still don't know who that is mere months before we are supposed to vote.
I’ll reply to this since I cannot reply to the sibling comment - but Medicare for all is not an actually popular or feasible idea. The polls that show support for Medicare for all have wording you the effect of “would you like free healthcare?”. Support quickly drops once polls start asking about the real trade offs that would have to be made in order to actually afford this change in healthcare, and the tax hikes needed to make it work.
Trying to pass off m4a as a feasible plan isn’t real, so it’s supporters all cling to support that a magical free plan would garner. They don’t actually have a plan to make it feasible, nor do they take the time to explain that part to their followers.
Crazy how when you word polls to indicate that taxes would be "hiked," that people get spooked. Never mind how we'd save money overall.
> Trying to pass off m4a as a feasible plan isn’t real
This is the real tragedy of the Bernie campaign. It wasn't feasible because it'd be spiked by Democrats in addition to Republicans. It's really heart-rending. You've got an entire voting base who simply can't imagine a better future where you're not squeezed for every cent, where you're not represented by people who are more focused on representing Pfizer, and where you don't have to be constantly in fear of accidentally getting cancer and, whoops, kids can't go to college now. Or say you catch a stray bullet, take an ambulance, and you're not covered--youre double fucked then.
See I guess that’s the exact reason I’m not a sanders supporter. I care about outcomes and couldn’t care less about the strategies used to get there. I see a public option as feasible, cost effective, minimally disruptive, and effective. I don’t fantasize about a 40 trillion dollar plan that would upend the largest American industry with uncertain effects. I’m especially not fantasizing about this effort being led by a man who spent his entire career in politics yet couldn’t manage to get a single large piece of legislation passed, and who actively burned his ties to the party he emigrated to because their politics weren’t radical enough.
Sanders actually played fast & dumb about the m4a numbers, then attacked warren when she tried putting actual numbers to the plan and tried to make it feasible. And the plan would actually cost around 40 trillion over a decade to implement, sorry if you were misled.
And didn’t sanders lose this primary worse than his first? Don’t blame us for whatever conservative you want to slot into the president slot next, blame sanders for campaigning for the past four years only to bank on Biden and Kamala splitting the black southern vote as his path to victory, then getting destroyed when that didn’t happen. There was no reason for him to antagonize those voters and tell them they don’t share his politics - at some point you’re just going to have to admit that sanders is a poor politician, as the rest of Washington has long realized.
If the last election was a referendum on establishment versus anti-establishment candidates, and if that same sentiment extends to this next election, then it seems like running an establishment candidate is a dangerous thing.
To be clear, I -personally- think Trump is very much part of the "esablishment" (whatever that might mean), and I am also open to either of those premises being false...
but I can certainly how they may be true.
And that's not getting into the questions that a lot of folks have about Biden's actual mental condition.
6 out of the last 7 people to be elected US president ran under the "outsider" banner, usually (wasn't alive for the earliest ones, so not entirely clear on the messaging) against someone they could coherently paint as an "insider".
It's not just the last election, is what I'm saying.
American progressives hate establishment democrats, thinking they are too market oriented and not sufficiently socialist. They don’t really accept the legitimacy of the democratic primary process when their preferred candidate, Bernie Sanders, is unable to secure the nomination. They believe that his inability to pass legislation, or persuade voters to support him, is a mark of his authenticity. This is highly sarcastic but true.
Automatically painting the other side as stupid is why the Democrats lost in 2016 (i.e. "deplorables"). It only drivers those voters to the other side.
I'll thank you to not put words in my mouth. Or you can point out where I "painted the other side as stupid".
You can make assumptions about my "bubble" or my "side" but we all exist in our own epistemic closures and you may want to examine yours just as much as I make sure I examine mine.
Here in real life, off the internet in a swing state, 100% of the people I know have become Trump supporters. Opinions on his response to the viral pandemic include "fine", "irrelevant because not his problem", and "who cares". Opinions on his environmental and climate policy are uniformly "more please" and "crank it to 11".
The only dip in popularity came with the bump stock ban. That really ticked people off.
It's just an extension of the George W. Bush era where every piece of legislation was required to have an name that was completely the opposite of its intent.
They would write a law allowing mines to dump heavy metal contaminated tailings into the nearby rivers and streams which would be named something ridiculous like the Clean Water Act.
Have you looked at who's in power lately? There are a lot of ~70 year olds in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. It seems relevant what they think.
it actually doesn't matter what the younger Republicans personally believe if they continue supporting and empowering the older Republicans who believe insane Cult of the Shining City death cult shit.
Because he'll use any leverage at all to support his own ego and agenda. Look at how the rest of the Republican party is scrambling to get their constituents to use 'absentee' ballots and even mail-in ones even though Fearless Leader is denouncing them.
DT has no concept of the costs of his words or actions, just whether or not it appears to help his own personal "success" in the moment.
A solid majority of US evangelicals believe Christ will return to Earth by 2050 (ie, the Rapture): 60%. In 2020 over 80% of US evangelicals plan to vote for the Republican candidate. They are a quarter of the US population.
That doesn't seem right. All we hear about is the evangelical support of Trump is unwavering even though he personally violates their expectations of behavior. They see him rewarding them in terms of laws, federal judges, supporting their desires and also the perhaps more complicated support for feeling of white people's power and privilege being under siege.
Thanks for noting the detachment. I also saw your reply acknowledging the summary of the possible reasons.
Not to argue or draw you out necessarily, but just want to share some thoughts.
We (society, human civilization) have incurred a lot of damage over the decades from anti-science motivations. If we can't call this out on HN, I don't know where we can call it out. Also it feels right to me that names should be named. Names of political parties, names of religions, etc.
I do understand the need to keep things, especially when flame wars are likely, from drifting off into divisive and toxic discussions, in order to keep this a healthy discussion. Maybe leaving out the naming of names is the cost to do this.
Somehow, these forces need to be called out.
Maybe this is not the place. That answer seems too facile, though.
Or maybe there are better ways. Instead of mentioning, focusing on, and calling out the negative, I have noticed some people simply highlight the positive alternative view, never acknowledging the (imho) toxic one. This is an interesting approach but I question how far it has gotten us, given… look around at the world today, to get my point.
Again my intent is not to argue with you about this, but just to share thoughts. I am questioning myself, whether I should become one of those people who always just ignores the bad, and only talks about the positive other options. I also realize there are better and worse ways to inject opinions into a discussion.
I think I'm not alone in struggling with this. Feedback welcome but not expected. Thanks.
The comment was generic religious/political flamebait and unsubstantive. I'm not criticizing you or your good intentions, just explaining how it externally appears from an HN moderation point of view.
Any place the phrase "calling out" appears, it's likely that the desired spirit of this site (i.e. intellectual curiosity) has been left behind. That phrase is the flagship of internet indignation, which is not compatible with curious conversation.
There may be a bit of a misunderstanding though. The intended style of discussion here is not about ignoring what's bad or focusing only on what's good. It's not a question of what you're focusing on, but how you're focusing on it, and what state a comment shifts the conversation into (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). There are certain predictable things about internet forum dynamics; one is that calling-out-style comments that don't add much information tend to take threads into simplistic, overheated states. One essential quality of what we're looking for on HN is unpredictability (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
Dr. Peter Carter, an IPCC expert reviewer, provides one of the most concise and sobering summaries of the trajectory of our planet as methane and carbon emissions continue to rise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa13KrOvE2s
It's one of the first things I think about when I read articles like this that demonstrate that not only are the powers that be not taking climate change seriously, they are actively accelerating it for profit.
Just watched that in its entirety and highly recommend. I think you can count on our species NOT solving this crisis. I'm kind of glad I don't have and don't want kids, but that's nothing compared to the inevitable, massive loss of life in our biosphere.
If you are one of the powers that be, and probably are of the ruling generation with 20-40 years left to live, why wouldn't you accelerate your gain? These people in positions of power don't care about the long term, because they will be dead by then, but will be able to realize that short term gain in their limited lifetime.
The only way to tackle climate change is to force politicians to sell all private assets and ban them from anything but investing in an index fund for the remainder of their life. Harsh, but public servants should really hold that name literally in my opinion. The science and engineering on climate change has been solved for decades. Whether or not we act in time is a political question, not a technical one.
I like your desire to restrain politician's incentives, & watching folks like Joe Biden takes these kind of steps (selling all his stocks thirty years ago) is a good thing to do.
At the same time it seems wholly insufficient. Whether Betsy DeVos has stocks is not really that relevant, when she still is going to act on behalf of her ultra-rich clan & other extremely well-monied interests.
I'm all for raising standards but I think there's a huge continent of politician who exist only to be bad guys, & some large large amount of people seem to love them for their wretchedness.
By now it is clear that is not stupidity but malice (or a combination of both) what have in this respect the powers that be. They are ok with the idea that after them, the deluge.
For the rest of us, well, fasten your seat belts and try to enjoy the ride.
It not just the power that be, but even the advocates in the green movement are pushing for the idea that natural gas is a suitable transitional solution until unset date in the future. Stopping climate change is not the highest priority for any group that has political power, which leaves scientists and onlookers.
Fossil fuels should really be banned from the energy grid and the date should be set well before any newly fossil fueled plant can regain enough of it investment to be profitable.
Not trying to make a political statement here but more about people and what they care about in general. Its amazing to me that trump's support is still at 40-45% in the country.
The people living in the same country can see things unfolding in front of their eyes and make completely different decisions on them is fascinating to me.
When I talk to my friends who are staunch trump supporters, they give me some fox news platitudes about him and Biden. But when I talk about individual issues and the things he has done all of them agree that its bad or really bad. I went down the list about 20-25 of them and did not get a single pushback. However they still vote for him. The human mind is a fascinating and complicated thing.
How many of those things materially hurt them in the short term? I assume most conservatives don’t care about an issue unless they themselves are going to affected by it in the immediate term.
>I assume most conservatives don’t care about an issue unless they themselves are going to affected by it in the immediate term
Unless that issue that doesn't affect these conservatives at all has something to do with what a woman can do with her body, or having a different skin tone, or worshiping a different god, that is. Rules for thee but not for me is practically a tenet of conservatism.
Don't forget the people who vote for Trump because he "Supports the troops"
Despite being Mr Bone Spurs
Despite making fun of a gold star family
Despite bounties on american heads
Despite not improving the VA
Despite the pentagon being a shitshow from Trump not filling lots of administrative positions and putting incompetent people in charge and even those people don't believe in him and try to softball the shit he is causing
Despite that covid death ship that the navy pretended wasn't happening
But yeah, "Blah blah supports Troops", whatever that means
Does anyone have a link to an actual writeup of which of these regulations are being rescinded? It's not clear from what's visible publicly on this WSJ article to a non-subscriber.
This will be interesting for the LNG exports to Europe
The EU commission is looking at associated methane emissions from natural gas imports, so there is a risk that the US may very well shut off their access to EU markets, or be subject to taxation or similar
The majority of politicians and voters didn't do enough to heed scientific warnings & prepare for an upcoming pandemic.. Similarly, we are not doing enough to mitigate climate change. Unfortunately the consequences will likely be much worse if we don't learn the lesson quickly..
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 227 ms ] threadNo, it's very easy. Environmental regulations cost money. Lots of money. It's much more profitable to keep these externalities.
I meant like literally. Where does the money that is spent meeting environmental regulations go? The money is not just being burnt up. It's going to a different segment of the economy, I'm just not versed in what that means or looks like.
Anyway, that money is generally spent on equipment and processes to clean up after whatever the company is doing. Collection pods for contaminated water. Scrubbers on chimneys. Direct pay to inspectors to come out and make sure you aren't trying to cheat to save money. That sort of thing. It spreads out across the entire economy. Markets and industries are formed to support finding the cheapest way to keep the processes in question from damaging the environment and requiring much more expensive cleanup (think EPA superfund and class action lawsuits over medical conditions suffered by nearby communities) after the fact.
Why can't Democrats get that message across?
The EPA is rightfully tired of cleaning up industry messes and would much prefer that the pollution not happen in the first place. It's much easier and cheaper to clean up that way.
So these regulations are all about preventing companies from passing on the costs of cleanup to the general public. One way or another you're paying for it, and it's much less expensive in almost every case if you pay for it up front. The only problem is that the free market doesn't price in externalities unless you force it to (via regulation) so the pollute now and let the public clean it up later approach is always going to win in an unregulated market.
Repealing regulations (not necessarily environmental ones) was popular enough to be a Trump campaign promise, after all.
- Piles of money for military and FBI projects in the same bill
- Despite there being 5 unemployed for every free job not wanting to pay people so much that they will incentivized not to work
- Not waiting to provide additional funds to states to deal with the current crisis
I don't think that's the whole story. You also have Zombie Reaganism, which has the Republicans reflexively aping 80s policy as the response to everything, even though it's not the 80s anymore.
Once it's personal, and they can't buy their way out then improvements can be maintained.
Better yet, they and their spouses and children.
That’s a narrow-minded view. Sure, environmental regulations cost oil and gas companies money.
But this fails to consider the external costs to society: increased healthcare costs and reduced life expectancy due to air and water pollution, future costs of global heating including property damage to coastal cities from rising sea levels, agricultural regions becoming less productive, etc.
Secondly, reducing dependence on fossil fuels (many of which are imported, even in America) will improve energy security and reduce energy costs in the long term. Great economic benefits, as well as environmental ones.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
Or should they consider these against long-term costs incurred by everyone? Surely there is a middle ground that works for everyone. It’s not as if major oil companies are struggling to survive.
We don't live in a world where we get to speculate on what the intended role of government ought to be.
It's a winning strategy. Not only in the US, but across most of the Anglo sphere. As an added bonus it provides huge payoffs to billionaires at the cost of the poor and middle class.
Not in the UK. Coal use has plummeted by 84% in 5 years (84 million tonnes in 2014 to 8 million tonnes in 2019), while renewable energy has been hugely expanded. All under “right wing” (Conservative) governments.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/09/is-this-...
And their target demographic isn't too interested in facts, so they'll never learn the reality that it was deregulation lead to a natural gas boom, which lead to the free market dealing the death blow to coal. So they can keep selling evil job killing regulations as the reason for the decline of everything great in this country.
Renewables get the headlines, but those coal plants are mostly being replaced with natural gas ones. The media reports "renewables overtake coal for the first time," which gives the false impression that solar and wind are displacing coal. But that's not what's really happening, which is that those former coal plants now burn natural gas because it's cheaper.
Not true in the UK. Natural gas use has also declined, albeit only slightly, in recent years. There has also been a net loss of capacity in the past decade as more old NG plants have closed than new ones built.
Meanwhile, coal, which produced 42% of all UK electricity as recently as 2012, has almost gone to zero while renewables (the bulk of which is offshore wind) are at 37% - and growing every year.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Natural-Gas-Has-Replaced-Ov...
And guess who is making donations, hiring nephews, and making up parts of portfolios. What the parent was saying is that externalities don't matter to these people because we don't value externalities as a society.
I agree that it is apparently a bonding exercise among certain capital-crowds to dismantle and mock environmental protections. The real world works like that.
It's a problem with collective action on a lot of climate problems in particular; the benefits are in the future and dilute while the costs are concentrated and immediate. Because of that there's a LOT of money available to push off imposing those costs and no direct money available to push for imposing them.
[0] Giant air quotes here because the approved disposal method is usually a poorly maintained pond that leeches into the water anyways.
If someone dumped tons of deadly chemicals into a river for no reason, and those actions resulted in the long-term deaths of thousands, they'd go to jail. But if that person does the same thing for profit, as an executive of a massive conglomerate, nothing happens to them.
As for piercing the veil it's rarely super clear that someone high up actually forced the pollution to happen. All the internal policies and emails usually say the right thing but the incentives, pressures and money all put pressure to people down the ladder to skirt the rules the inevitably leads to disaster.
There's a part of it that's performative. Liberals care about the environment and want to impose regulations, ergo conservatives should disregard the environment and should roll back regulations.
Of course, this is a ridiculous line of reasoning. But it's not meant to convince anyone who would recognize how illogical that is.
With an administration willing to do anything for a little grift, and demographic changes threatening the governing dynamic (non-hispanic whites will be ~50% of the population by 2030-2040), this is the time to cash in.
It all comes down to their ideology, which in a nutshell comes down to: maximizing profits and (perceived) short-term gains for its core constituency (i.e. business elites) - and where that's not quite possible, at least keep the illusion of an every-expanding, anything goes "free market" system chugging along for another year or two -- at the expense of everyone and everything else -- and all common sense to boot.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/does-yo...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter
Voting is actually the least effective means of democratic change (It is more effective then sitting at home, and complaining.) The second least effective means of democratic change is getting other people to vote. The most effective means of democratic change is picking the candidates that will be in the running - before voting happens - which can largely be done with dollars.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
[1] https://freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/does-money-really-buy-el...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter
There's also the tried-and-true strategy of paying off both candidates, so that regardless who wins, they'll be beholden to you.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelt...
Besides, post-2016 it appears the business elites have switched sides.
The "maximizing profits" trope simply doesn't explain why oil and gas has such an outsize influence. If profits are what mattered, the tech sector would have tremendous influence, but it doesn't. It doesn't, because unlike oil and gas it doesn't employ tons of non-college workers in swing states, and the cost of their products doesn't hit everyone in the wallet once a week. Profits are secondary or tertiary at best.
You try to skirt around the issue saying the profits are maybe being passed down the consumer more than one thinks, ok valid. But the point still remains that everything that is being done is to maximize short term profits / cut short term consumer costs.
>policies that make oil and gas products cheaper popular with voters not just popular with "business elites."
Well.. so what? Of course 95% of people would generally say "MAKE THINGS CHEAPER!" That doesn't mean it should be done.
Besides, you are also making it sound like more people would rather have cheaper gas than a long-sustainable environment. Not so sure you are right on that one.
I agree that these kinds of supports (to certain industry sectors) don't always do all that much to maximize their profits (short, let alone long).
The real reason behind them is their symbolic effect. It's the idea of a limitless (and infinitely exploitable) "frontier" -- and the inherent, sacred right of private capital to manage that exploitation, unfettered by regulation -- that they seek to defend with these actions. (That, and the repudiation of basic science on general principles of course).
That some of their donors (who as I'm sure you know will individually benefit many magnitudes of order more than individual consumers will from the temporary increase in economic potential) is a nice plus (icing on the cake) as it were -- but it's not the main driver.
That's not it at all. It politics, not ideology.
The fossil fuel industries in the US are huge. They employ millions of people.
But those industries are rightly under attack for causing climate change and generally destroying the environment. If we did the right thing and priced carbon and prohibited pollution then they would be uncompetitive. Those forms of energy would cost more than solar or nuclear or something else and those people would lose their jobs.
Which is what needs to happen, but did you really think they'd go down without a fight? Any politician who wants to win an election in those districts is going to be under pressure to take the "screw the environment to save the oil industry" position. It happens that the oil and coal deposits are disproportionately in red states, so that's where those constituents live and those are the politicians saddled with that voting block.
This is a different motivation than an ideological preference for actual deregulation, which would have them e.g. refusing to regulate the tech industry rather than calling for some ridiculous anti-encryption nonsense.
To get rid of it you need to do one of two things. One option is that when the other team gets in they need to do a better job of completely smashing those industries into smithereens so they no longer represent a powerful constituency (e.g. Obama could have done this but didn't), but they pay a short term cost for doing that. They'd almost certainly lose the next election because in the short term the people whose jobs you just destroyed are going to be angry and resentful. You also run the risk that after you lose the election the other team comes in and undoes what you did.
The other option, and this is the really great one, is that you also pick some evil constituency of the other team and have everyone get together and destroy them both at once, so that politically it cancels out. But that requires a level of bipartisanship that isn't currently very common. It's everybody doing something which is good for the country even though it yields no partisan advantage, and that's not really how modern politicians think, so how do you get it to happen?
- Eliminating existing grandfathered-in wood burning fireplaces. Costs almost nothing as measured by dollars.
- Emission controls on restaurant exhaust. This is currently required only for restaurants that chat-grill more than a certain amount of beef. Restaurants that smoke up whole blocks grilling pork, lamb, veggies, etc are exempt. These emission controls are not that expensive.
- Outdated fuel-burning devices such as 2-stroke leaf blowers and old cars. Electric leaf blowers are cheap now. Old cars are fun, and banning or taxing them would be unpopular but would cost almost zero dollars.
https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/6c4535d/214...
I would imagine that the average restaurant grill emits very little NOx and a whole lot of PM2.5.
The cleanup for it started in 2006 and is ongoing today. It's only within the past decade that fish finally started swimming in the river. And now the neighborhoods that it runs through are seeing huge increases in property values and new development as this former toxic waste dump is now converted into water-front bike trails and parks.
We absolutely still see the benefits of the Clean Water Act today.
Some regulations have low cost and high benefit. They should be kept.
Others have high cost and low benefit. They should be removed or reformed.
For regulations that have low cost and high benefit, the costs are often borne by few people, but the benefits are spread among many. Those who bear the costs scream loudly; those who reap the benefits may be mildly grateful. And those who bear the costs try very hard to make this regulation look like it is high-cost and low-benefit.
And the same is true in reverse for regulations that are high-cost and low-benefit. Those who receive the benefit try very hard (and very loudly) to make it seem that the regulation is low-cost and high-benefit.
This can make it hard to determine which kind of regulation is which, even if you genuinely want to. But regulations are political, and politicians care about votes, not necessarily about costs and benefits. As long as the narrow interests care deeply (and vote accordingly), the politicians are not likely to care about the wider interests.
Given Watt's public pillorying, methinks the others learned to keep their apocalyptic beliefs on the down low. Mostly.
I really wish people on the "left" would learn that when people voice such beliefs to believe them, that they're not joking.
Edit: Oops. Just saw natch's reply. Sorry for dupe.
And that's why there's a lot of people who hate regulations, especially environmental regulations. They have a very concrete harm from the regulations that they can see (they can't do certain actions), and the benefits are not so easily noticed. Labor regulations, where the benefits are much more easily visible and relatable are likely to have higher support, although I suspect that a large rural constituency wouldn't mind seeing child labor laws repealed.
(And if you're told you can't turn a swamp into a field, for example, you also ought to get paid for effectively having to maintain a public resource.)
Actually, the local village did offer to buy all the wetlands and a bit more [for road access] to turn into parkland, but my grandparents turned the offer down.
That said, it also does seem like this narrative of "regulation is ruining everything", as a sort of objection to regulation as a concept without reference to what the regulation is regulation, has seen an uptick recently, between Trumpism and Brexit.
These methane regulations are a good example. Every state that has oil & gas drilling already regulates methane emissions as part of the necessary permits. The Obama EPA enacted a rule to federalize those standards that took effect in March of 2016. It's a duplicative rule that's been operative for about five minutes.
I like Obama a lot, but on the environmental front, he was willing to spend zero political capital to achieve consensus on environmental reforms. To the contrary, he won reelection on a pro-coal and pro-fracking platform! Here is Obama criticizing Romney for standing in front of a coal plant (as Governor) and saying "this plant kills": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXRmlxBDjfE. Here is Obama talking about the how great fracking is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uVGY3sIBsA. He somehow found environmental Jesus around 2015 and rushed through a bunch of regulations at the last minute. But, as such, his successor is perfectly entitled to reverse them just as quickly and easily.
From that perspective, deregulating areas which prevent us from competing in historically outsourced industries with large ecological footprints makes perfect sense to them.
I expect this to have a bet-negative impact on our ecosystems, and quality of life. But with any luck, our more informed public - faced with the real externalities of their lifestyles, will be more readily swayed to adjust their consumption patterns in order to make for a better world.
History will not be kind to Trump or to his followers. The coming economic shift with automation are going to eat the last of their jobs and their future. To them, as long as it makes the Left cry, its totally worth destroying everything along the way...
Ignorance is not a virtue as one cannot eat, drink or breath money.
Most companies are not going to go backwards because they know that a second a Democrat is in charge, they're going to be tasked with sticking to tougher regulations. They're not going to backfall after this much time and energy has been spent on the issue.
Trumpism isn't about doing what's smart, though. It's about smiting those who disagree with you and dismantling the regulatory state while strengthening the administrative state by stacking the courts so that Congress is locked out of decision making. They aren't doing it because it's the smart thing to do. They're doing it because Democrats hate it.
I have an early-90s Volkswagen van. It came with a very underpowered and fuel-thirsty gas engine. Eventually it could barely make it up the hills around here, and was prohibitively expensive (not to mention unreliable) to use practically.
I replaced the old engine with a modern TDI that gets ~33mpg and is undoubtably cleaner than the 80s-era technology that powered it before. It gave the van a renewed life, keeping it from being crushed and precluding the environmental cost of building a new car. And above all, it solved my problem in a mentally engaging way.
For this I have been rewarded with constant red tape from the state department of air quality and EPA. They test tailpipe opacity while driving it on a set of rollers (if I can find a tech that knows how to drive stick shift). The standard to beat is 20% opaque, which would choke out the room. Despite the LED/opto pair usually measuring less than 1% opaque, it once measured 100% opaque. Think about that for a minute.
I am not the only one to have done something like this, much less the only one to have EPA-mandated portable gas container designs break & spill, EPA-mandated sensor systems break and cost hundreds, etc. I'm not the only one who's been annoyed by land closures (despite having a permit) due to the EPA's concerns of dust entering the air. This is to say nothing of e.g. the farmers who have had increased compliance costs and fines for operating on their own land. A politician coming out against the EPA is an immediate emotional appeal to many people who are somewhat likely to support Trump's ideas to begin with. These people feel they have been hamstrung by the man, and apparently think that mining for uranium in the Grand Canyon is a reasonable price to pay to beat back the EPA a little.
The answer, of course, is to be more sensible in the way that the environment is regulated. No, people should not mine the Grand Canyon (at least not in any way mining is currently conducted). No, a yearly tailpipe opacity test is not an effective way of regulating diesel emissions. But unfortunately, politics turns everything into an emotional appeal that leads to both sides talking past one another. I think the best thing we can do as individuals is honestly try to be better.
It's annoying we're only making headway in transitioning off of fossil fuels due to luck (cost decline curve of renewables and batteries, making them cheaper than all other fossil and nuclear generation) and a pandemic instead of a concerted effort. "It is what it is."
EDIT: @natch: To refine my point, I don't intend to minimize the work of those performing R&D or implementation of renewables and associated technologies, but that we "lucked out" that we've gotten as far as we have with the minimal amount of resources we've put into the domain. We should be pouring significant amounts of global GDP and productivity into this transition.
[1] https://berniesanders.com/issues/green-new-deal/
[2] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Climate-and-COVID-19 (Bill Gates: "COVID-19 is awful. Climate change could be worse.")
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/20/a-wider-par...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-vi...
Following politics right now is thoroughly disheartening; it does nothing to help my day to day, nor does it really affect it.
One needs only to look back at the last 100 years of the United States both to see how far we’ve come and far we have to go.
If more democrats stayed in the race after South Carolina instead of all dropping out like flies the day before super tuesday, there is decent chance he would be the nominee right now.
Not just due to luck. Due to a lot of hard work by a lot of people.
After that, it's road and bridge building and protecting communities of colour.
What will Democrats (this needs to come from Congress, the presidency is basically powerless to make real change here) actually do?
(edit, finished reading, just more about unspecified investment, workers rights, and unmatched American innovation).
Methane is way worse as a greenhouse gas.
Another example of something that was so important they waited until less than 3 months before the election to do it. It hardly needs saying, but this is devastatingly bad environmental and climate policy.
1. You might be surprised at the election outcome. 2. The headline is based on the article, not what people think it should be.
Even before that, enormous numbers of people were harmed, but they weren't among his supporters. Indeed, for them, the negative outcomes were the desired effect. Even if they lose in the fall, they will continue to prefer to insult, harass, and even defend murder if it's of the people they don't like.
November won't even begin to fix what's wrong. It began long before 2016, and my biggest fear will be that come 2024 they'll elect somebody who is not only hateful, but also competent, and not saddled with a crisis immediately before the election.
This comment works for both sides of the political game, even though I only believe it works for one
You can do what you want, throwaway account. When you get Matt Gaetz in 2024 let me know how it feels. 4 years of more means testing will get you there real quick.
For what it's worth, if Dems manage to gain control of the Senate, then I think President Biden will sign anything that is put in front of him, including an M4A bill. Not doing that would actually cost him the 2024 election.
The man has stated he has no interest in running again afterwards. If we're, for whatever reason, taking what he says as truth, then he doesn't need that.
Furthermore, and this is the real important part, the man doesn't base his power upon accountability to the electorate. His base of power showed it's strengrh prior to Super Tuesday. He's riding on the democratic base and whatever reaction there is to Trump, but he's in no way accountable to the electorate.
I cannot think of a single President in recent history who actually refused to run for re-election. Can you?
Regardless of whether he seeks a second term, I don't think he would sabotage the Democratic Party by refusing to sign an M4A bill, if one is put in front of him.
He wouldn't need to, they'd never put one forward. Just like card check.
Trying to pass off m4a as a feasible plan isn’t real, so it’s supporters all cling to support that a magical free plan would garner. They don’t actually have a plan to make it feasible, nor do they take the time to explain that part to their followers.
Crazy how when you word polls to indicate that taxes would be "hiked," that people get spooked. Never mind how we'd save money overall.
> Trying to pass off m4a as a feasible plan isn’t real
This is the real tragedy of the Bernie campaign. It wasn't feasible because it'd be spiked by Democrats in addition to Republicans. It's really heart-rending. You've got an entire voting base who simply can't imagine a better future where you're not squeezed for every cent, where you're not represented by people who are more focused on representing Pfizer, and where you don't have to be constantly in fear of accidentally getting cancer and, whoops, kids can't go to college now. Or say you catch a stray bullet, take an ambulance, and you're not covered--youre double fucked then.
Again, when Tucker Carlson is the president, think long and hard about this moment.
And didn’t sanders lose this primary worse than his first? Don’t blame us for whatever conservative you want to slot into the president slot next, blame sanders for campaigning for the past four years only to bank on Biden and Kamala splitting the black southern vote as his path to victory, then getting destroyed when that didn’t happen. There was no reason for him to antagonize those voters and tell them they don’t share his politics - at some point you’re just going to have to admit that sanders is a poor politician, as the rest of Washington has long realized.
To be clear, I -personally- think Trump is very much part of the "esablishment" (whatever that might mean), and I am also open to either of those premises being false...
but I can certainly how they may be true.
And that's not getting into the questions that a lot of folks have about Biden's actual mental condition.
It's not just the last election, is what I'm saying.
But this time everyone knows he will lose...
Automatically painting the other side as stupid is why the Democrats lost in 2016 (i.e. "deplorables"). It only drivers those voters to the other side.
You can make assumptions about my "bubble" or my "side" but we all exist in our own epistemic closures and you may want to examine yours just as much as I make sure I examine mine.
Here in real life, off the internet in a swing state, 100% of the people I know have become Trump supporters. Opinions on his response to the viral pandemic include "fine", "irrelevant because not his problem", and "who cares". Opinions on his environmental and climate policy are uniformly "more please" and "crank it to 11".
The only dip in popularity came with the bump stock ban. That really ticked people off.
Shouldn’t it now be called something like the Oil & Gas Promotion Agency (OGPA)?
They would write a law allowing mines to dump heavy metal contaminated tailings into the nearby rivers and streams which would be named something ridiculous like the Clean Water Act.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/10/431223703...
As republican former secretary of the interior James Watt put it, “Why worry about the environment when the second coming is at hand?”
The "Christian Right" is a relic that died during the first Dubya administration.
It's nothing more than a boogeyman for progressives now.
Talk to some younger Republicans, even Christian ones, who aren't in your social filter bubble.
The whole Falwell family has long been disgraced and ignored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority#1988 If you scroll down and do some followup reading you'll see that his plans to revive the organization failed miserably.
They'll all be gone soon enough.
DT has no concept of the costs of his words or actions, just whether or not it appears to help his own personal "success" in the moment.
It is a solidly mainstream Republican belief.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2010/07/14/jesus-chris...
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/01/white-evang...
https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/
It was pronounced dead loads of times between '08 & '16 and this is just one.
You see it mentioned, because as I previously said it's a boogeyman used to scare us liberals. You're being manipulated.
Edit: Yes WaPo, May 24, 1981. Pre-www, so no link.
Not to argue or draw you out necessarily, but just want to share some thoughts.
We (society, human civilization) have incurred a lot of damage over the decades from anti-science motivations. If we can't call this out on HN, I don't know where we can call it out. Also it feels right to me that names should be named. Names of political parties, names of religions, etc.
I do understand the need to keep things, especially when flame wars are likely, from drifting off into divisive and toxic discussions, in order to keep this a healthy discussion. Maybe leaving out the naming of names is the cost to do this.
Somehow, these forces need to be called out.
Maybe this is not the place. That answer seems too facile, though.
Or maybe there are better ways. Instead of mentioning, focusing on, and calling out the negative, I have noticed some people simply highlight the positive alternative view, never acknowledging the (imho) toxic one. This is an interesting approach but I question how far it has gotten us, given… look around at the world today, to get my point.
Again my intent is not to argue with you about this, but just to share thoughts. I am questioning myself, whether I should become one of those people who always just ignores the bad, and only talks about the positive other options. I also realize there are better and worse ways to inject opinions into a discussion.
I think I'm not alone in struggling with this. Feedback welcome but not expected. Thanks.
Any place the phrase "calling out" appears, it's likely that the desired spirit of this site (i.e. intellectual curiosity) has been left behind. That phrase is the flagship of internet indignation, which is not compatible with curious conversation.
There may be a bit of a misunderstanding though. The intended style of discussion here is not about ignoring what's bad or focusing only on what's good. It's not a question of what you're focusing on, but how you're focusing on it, and what state a comment shifts the conversation into (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). There are certain predictable things about internet forum dynamics; one is that calling-out-style comments that don't add much information tend to take threads into simplistic, overheated states. One essential quality of what we're looking for on HN is unpredictability (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's one of the first things I think about when I read articles like this that demonstrate that not only are the powers that be not taking climate change seriously, they are actively accelerating it for profit.
The only way to tackle climate change is to force politicians to sell all private assets and ban them from anything but investing in an index fund for the remainder of their life. Harsh, but public servants should really hold that name literally in my opinion. The science and engineering on climate change has been solved for decades. Whether or not we act in time is a political question, not a technical one.
At the same time it seems wholly insufficient. Whether Betsy DeVos has stocks is not really that relevant, when she still is going to act on behalf of her ultra-rich clan & other extremely well-monied interests.
I'm all for raising standards but I think there's a huge continent of politician who exist only to be bad guys, & some large large amount of people seem to love them for their wretchedness.
For the rest of us, well, fasten your seat belts and try to enjoy the ride.
Fossil fuels should really be banned from the energy grid and the date should be set well before any newly fossil fueled plant can regain enough of it investment to be profitable.
The people living in the same country can see things unfolding in front of their eyes and make completely different decisions on them is fascinating to me.
When I talk to my friends who are staunch trump supporters, they give me some fox news platitudes about him and Biden. But when I talk about individual issues and the things he has done all of them agree that its bad or really bad. I went down the list about 20-25 of them and did not get a single pushback. However they still vote for him. The human mind is a fascinating and complicated thing.
Unless that issue that doesn't affect these conservatives at all has something to do with what a woman can do with her body, or having a different skin tone, or worshiping a different god, that is. Rules for thee but not for me is practically a tenet of conservatism.
Despite being Mr Bone Spurs Despite making fun of a gold star family Despite bounties on american heads Despite not improving the VA Despite the pentagon being a shitshow from Trump not filling lots of administrative positions and putting incompetent people in charge and even those people don't believe in him and try to softball the shit he is causing Despite that covid death ship that the navy pretended wasn't happening
But yeah, "Blah blah supports Troops", whatever that means
The EU commission is looking at associated methane emissions from natural gas imports, so there is a risk that the US may very well shut off their access to EU markets, or be subject to taxation or similar
https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/commission-open-views-methane...
And it's only just beginning.
This is going to get boring real quick, complaints should have been in April or even January.
Environment/disability/healthcare will all be cut and stay cut for years no mater who is in charge.