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What a stupid idea. Anyone in favor of this should have to spend a few months in Dehli, Beijing, Chongqing, or even worse, a true industrial city or district i

by notadoc 10y ago

What a stupid idea. Anyone in favor of this should have to spend a few months in Dehli, Beijing, Chongqing, or even worse, a true industrial city or district in either country. The rivers and creeks are full of visible toxic waste, sewage and garbage, the air is so foul and acrid that almost everyone wears masks, your eyes can burn from who-knows-what chemicals in the air, water is trucked in from hundreds of miles away from clean sources (and sometimes imported from different countries entirely). No, that's not fog, that's pollution. No that's not a cloudy day, that's pollution. After a few days with enough time spent outside, you develop congestion and a minor sensation of having a cold, and when you blow your nose a bunch of black and brown soot comes out. But hey, you can pay slave labor wages to make cheap disposable crap for oversees consumer markets!

1024core 10y ago
Why Delhi, Beijing, Chongqing? Why not ask the old-timers who grew up in LA ( cf. https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/las-smoggy-past-in-photos https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/las-smoggy-past-in-photos ), for instance? Or how about asking someone who was in Cleveland in June 1969, when the Ohio river caught fire? ( https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/63 https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/63 ) Compare those times to today, and you can see the impact of the EPA. Right here, at home.
- notadoc 10y ago
  Mostly because we don't have a time machine, and anecdotes are often less impactful than direct experience. The scale, level of filth, and complete disregard for the environment in modern China and India is incomparable to anything ever seen in the USA anyway.
splintercell 10y ago
> Anyone in favor of this should have to spend a few months in Dehli, Beijing, Chongqing, or even worse, a true industrial city or district in either country. I wish people understood something about environment concerns, the action of using cleaner methods is a 'cost', and this cost is only worth paying when the people behind it are willing to pay the cost. These countries aren't dirty because they don't have an EPA, they are dirty because they are making their lives better and for the time being they don't care about spending huge cost on keeping things clean. Consider it to be like writing tests for your code. Writing tests for your code is a cost and not every team is willing to pay it, even though they should. If govt creates a National Testing Agency in 1987 which forced teams to have certain code coverage and tests then it would have faced major opposition from most people. In 2007 even fewer teams wrote tests, and in 1997 very few teams wrote tests. Similarly in 2027 testing standards would be a lot bigger norm where the presumption would be that every component is fully covered and tested. When West had its industrial revolution it was pretty dirty, but it was acceptable to most people because their standards of living were going up exponentially high. Sooner or later after reaching a plateau of progress, they realized that at this point they don't care about increase in standards of living via goods as much as they care about other things like cleaner environment etc. People in India and China currently don't care so much about environment because of the magnitudes of progress they are seeing. Soon enough they will start valuing cleaner air and water.
- sammydavis 10y ago
  I strongly disagree with your statement. Many people in India and China would be happy to have cleaner skies. Especially in China, they know that they have too many polluting factories, and their economy has gotten to the point that they can afford to have treatment of the exhaust - but many companies pay off regulators as that is cheaper than treating their waste products. Some of the very poorest of the poor would be more open to dirty industry so they can have a more affluent lifestyle, but it is not something they all want. And in the US, we didn't have people willingly trading off more pollution for better jobs - there just wasn't an easy way to stop the polluters.
- treebeard901 10y ago
  It seems extremely unlikely that most of the people in these countries are fine with the health effects from their environment. A more likely scenario is that they have no power or voice to do anything about it. A company exists to create profit. This is true in China, India and the U.S. We can see first hand the damage this causes without some form of regulatory control. It is similar to saying that the free market will regulate itself and we all know how that turned out.
diogenescynic 10y ago
We have to stop the republican party to save the planet. They will continue to allow oil companies and chemical companies to pollute and lie about it until we force them to change.

by notadoc 10y ago

1024core 10y ago

Why Delhi, Beijing, Chongqing? Why not ask the old-timers who grew up in LA ( cf. https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/las-smoggy-past-in-photos https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/las-smoggy-past-in-photos ), for instance? Or how about asking someone who was in Cleveland in June 1969, when the Ohio river caught fire? ( https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/63 https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/63 ) Compare those times to today, and you can see the impact of the EPA. Right here, at home.

notadoc 10y ago
Mostly because we don't have a time machine, and anecdotes are often less impactful than direct experience. The scale, level of filth, and complete disregard for the environment in modern China and India is incomparable to anything ever seen in the USA anyway.

splintercell 10y ago

> Anyone in favor of this should have to spend a few months in Dehli, Beijing, Chongqing, or even worse, a true industrial city or district in either country. I wish people understood something about environment concerns, the action of using cleaner methods is a 'cost', and this cost is only worth paying when the people behind it are willing to pay the cost. These countries aren't dirty because they don't have an EPA, they are dirty because they are making their lives better and for the time being they don't care about spending huge cost on keeping things clean. Consider it to be like writing tests for your code. Writing tests for your code is a cost and not every team is willing to pay it, even though they should. If govt creates a National Testing Agency in 1987 which forced teams to have certain code coverage and tests then it would have faced major opposition from most people. In 2007 even fewer teams wrote tests, and in 1997 very few teams wrote tests. Similarly in 2027 testing standards would be a lot bigger norm where the presumption would be that every component is fully covered and tested. When West had its industrial revolution it was pretty dirty, but it was acceptable to most people because their standards of living were going up exponentially high. Sooner or later after reaching a plateau of progress, they realized that at this point they don't care about increase in standards of living via goods as much as they care about other things like cleaner environment etc. People in India and China currently don't care so much about environment because of the magnitudes of progress they are seeing. Soon enough they will start valuing cleaner air and water.

sammydavis 10y ago
I strongly disagree with your statement. Many people in India and China would be happy to have cleaner skies. Especially in China, they know that they have too many polluting factories, and their economy has gotten to the point that they can afford to have treatment of the exhaust - but many companies pay off regulators as that is cheaper than treating their waste products. Some of the very poorest of the poor would be more open to dirty industry so they can have a more affluent lifestyle, but it is not something they all want. And in the US, we didn't have people willingly trading off more pollution for better jobs - there just wasn't an easy way to stop the polluters.
treebeard901 10y ago
It seems extremely unlikely that most of the people in these countries are fine with the health effects from their environment. A more likely scenario is that they have no power or voice to do anything about it. A company exists to create profit. This is true in China, India and the U.S. We can see first hand the damage this causes without some form of regulatory control. It is similar to saying that the free market will regulate itself and we all know how that turned out.

diogenescynic 10y ago

We have to stop the republican party to save the planet. They will continue to allow oil companies and chemical companies to pollute and lie about it until we force them to change.