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EPA declines to tighten soot pollution standards
- webkike 6y agoWho could have possibly seen this coming
- ryanobjc 6y agoPm2.5 is a major pollutant and irritant. It's linked to all sorts of naughty things. But sure, let's not worry about it.
- xfitm3 6y ago> EPA officials said they decided to keep the 12-micrograms-per-cubic-meter limit after review by a scientific advisory committee and considering public comments, per WSJ. So we get to inhale particulates of soot but god forbid if I want a plastic bag or straw.
- linuxftw 6y agoI don't think the EPA is the entity responsible for banning those items.
- xfitm3 6y agoNo, it is a little kid who went all over TV having discovered a turtle with a straw lodged in its nose.
- minikites 6y agoI agree with you that we should limit both plastic straws and soot pollution.
- xfitm3 6y agoI do not support the ban of plastic straws. Paper straws just aren't functional, and I need to use em. I bring my own plastic ones now.
- solarengineer 6y agoYou could bring your own steel straws instead of plastic. There are those who bring their own cutlery as well. Due to growing demand, people are innovating in this space and are covering aspects such as reuse, sturdiness, ability to clean, storage, aesthetics.
- mattst88 6y agoI thought metal straws were a fine idea until I heard about the failure mode: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/world/europe/metal-straws-death.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/world/europe/metal-straws...
- bastawhiz 6y agoIs there truly a risk here? The article opens with a discussion of a person predisposed to falls falling while holding a sufficiently sharp straw. The same could have happened with a knife or a pair of scissors or a fork. Hell, it could have happened with a sufficiently stiff plastic straw or bamboo straw—even a bubble tea straw. The Starbucks recall the article mentions relates to a product defect unrelated to the above incident. The same recall could have been issued for _any_ utensil, thermos, or other durable item that Starbucks sells. The article also cites dental risks, and almost parodies itself: “Just like we tell people not to chew on pens.” Well, yeah. I could also chew on my silverware and I'm certain my dentist would disapprove. The note about failing to clean the straws is probably the biggest risk to the average consumer, but the same risk exists with literally any reusable utensil or cup. That article feels like it's trying hard to fish for a reason to be concerned about metal straws.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoI think the thing is if you remembered to bring your own straws you would just bring your own drink. That’s not really a bad thing either. I recently purchased a small backpack large enough for just my drink bottle at a sports store which makes it very convenient to bring water everywhere. Better for my health, wallet and the environment but it is more effort than leaving care free and grabbing a drink later.
- titzer 6y agoAs someone who has picked up literally thousands of plastic straws on beaches on every continent in the world and waterways across the United States, I absolutely and totally support a ban on all one-time use plastics.
- Pfhreak 6y agoAs someone who has never gone out their way to pick up plastic straws anywhere, but is generally and vaguely aware of the damage they cause, I too would support a general ban on single use plastics.
- sigzero 6y agoJust wait. Biden is going to reverse a lot of this stuff.
- seattletech 6y agoWhich will end up at SCOTUS and we will see the Chevron doctrine overturned
- toomuchtodo 6y agoWhich is an acceptable risk (and could happen regardless of policies challenging pollution prevention), as long as the temporary executive order (or agency policy) forces industry changes in the interim that can’t or won’t be reversed post SCOTUS decision. Observe how legacy automakers have dropped their support for EPA efforts to remove California CARB authority, and have gotten onboard with tighter emission standards now that the new administration is onboarding [1] [2]. This is not altruism, but “reading the room.” Regulation need not stick long term to be effective. Are automakers going to retool back to combustion vehicle production from EV production as we approach deadlines for combustion vehicle bans if those bans evaporate? Coal plants rebuilt? Electric busses scrapped for diesel buses? Unlikely. The capital will have already been committed, and domain expertise retired. The ruling then rings hollow. This is not to discount the challenges we face with the current SCOTUS composition, but to triage and prioritize climate change efforts until the composition can be improved. “Technical debt”, if you will. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/climate/general-motors-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/climate/general-motors-tr... [2] https://carbuzz.com/news/nissans-bold-decision-was-inspired-by-gm https://carbuzz.com/news/nissans-bold-decision-was-inspired-...
- Pfhreak 6y agoI think that maybe I'm too much of a leftist to think that Biden will accomplish any meaningful change. Plenty of exploratory committees, investigations, and deep dives. But fundamentally, I don't expect him to do much beyond maintain the status quo that centrist dems like Obama and Clinton have been pushing for decades. He'll put out a few executive orders and maybe get us back into a climate accord, but he's still deeply a capitalist and fossil fuel backing candidate at heart.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoOne question is how much tightening soot pollution standards would really help. For example, a lot of the country this past year had horrible air quality, not from industrial pollution, but from wildfires. Are we really able to achieve that level of pollution, even when we include natural sources like wildfires?
- jellicle 6y agoThis is confusing to me. You're saying that there are other sources of particulate pollution (a cumulatively dangerous pollutant), therefore we should NOT regulate human-caused sources? That seems backwards.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoA lot has to do with percentages. Let’s say you cut back human produced levels from 12 to 8, a 50% reduction. However, if the average non-human level was say 100, you would actually be cutting the total level 4% which may or may not show a difference in health, however the cost of a 50% reduction in human produced levels may be a lot.
- bastawhiz 6y ago8 is not 50% of 12. But we're talking about massive numbers here. If that "100" is 1,000,000 tons of soot, reducing human-produced soot from 12 to 8 is taking 40,000 tons of soot out of the environment. And that's likely not uniformly distributed across the country: you're far more likely to have hot spots of human-produced soot, which adds up to tens of thousands of kids who don't end up getting (or are affected less by) asthma, thousands of adults whose lifespans are materially lengthened, and greatly reduced healthcare costs.
- sagarm 6y agoAs noted in the article, the EPA estimated this rule change would have saved 12,000 lives per year. For reference, 30,000 people are killed by drivers every year. 50,000 people die from suicide. So changing this rule is equivalent to reducing suicide rates by 25% or auto fatalities by over 30%.
- jupp0r 6y agoLuckily, coal is becoming less and less profitable compared to renewables. Not saying the decision is good, but pure economics will hopefully solve this problem in the long run.
- FlyMoreRockets 6y agoCoal isn't even all of the problem. "Rolling Coal" is a personal political statement of thousands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal Greenland once had a booming ecotourism industry, driving people across the ice sheet in diesel powered trucks. That is, until the diesel soot particulates destroyed the routes across the ice sheet.
- imglorp 6y agoThat's actually easy to regulate at the state level, if states were on board. Simply failing inspection would take them off the road.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoUsually they have a hidden switch to toggle the mode. I guess the best method would be dash cam evidence
- tptacek 6y agoI doubt idiots in modified trucks are a major component of our problem here.
- roamerz 6y agoAnd in other news San Francisco bans the cleanest energy around.
- rayiner 6y ago> Yes, but: The agency's scientists in a report last year said studies support a new limit between 8 and 10 micrograms, which they said could potentially save more than 12,000 lives a year. > But officials noted that U.S. particulate matter levels are 20% lower than in France, Germany and Great Britain, and five times below the world average, per WSJ. I'm floored. I think this is the most informative article describing an EPA rule I've seen in years. Our discourse would be so much more fruitful if we compared what we're doing to what folks are doing in our counterpart developed countries.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoThose countries probably have a much higher population density than the US. To make a valid comparison, I think you need to level that difference. The comparison with “the world” includes places like Mongolia and other large places with little soot pollution.
- ozborn 6y agoMongolia is probably not the exampke you are looking for... https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/mongolia-air-pollution/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/mongo...
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoHa, good point! But I imagine they still have very low overall soot pollution when averaged over the entire country. Who knows... but thanks for educating me.
- perardi 6y agoI’m wondering if it's more to do with diesel passenger vehicles. You have to work really hard to even find a diesel passenger car in the States. Whereas, at least for right now, they’re ubiquitous in the EU. (I mean an every day consumer vehicle you buy at a car dealership, ranging from a hatchback to an SUV.) Which was ostensibly good for carbon emissions, given the fuel efficiency of contemporary diesel engines. Except, oops, they were lying through their teeth about non-CO2 emissions, and they kick out a godawful amount of pollution.
- chrisweekly 6y agoIMHO, a title like "EPA declines... " assigns too much, er, agency to an Agency that, IIUC, has none. "Trump administration continues to pour gasoline on tire fires while they still can... " might be more accurate. Apologies if this was inflammatory. It's been a day.
- Terrario 6y agoI think you’re overestimating both the extent and degree of the executive branch’s power.
- mattst88 6y ago> The move is "backed by chemical, oil and other industry groups that bear the costs of implementing the higher standards," the Journal writes. I'm bothered by this description. The polluters are not paying for their external costs (i.e., the pollution they're putting into the atmosphere). Those costs have serious effects beyond their bottom lines, like 12,000 additional deaths per year. I think this is a more accurate desciption: > The move is backed by chemical, oil and other industry groups that are benefiting financially by foisting the costs of their pollution on society.
- sagarm 6y agoOr in economic terms, these companies currently benefit from unpriced and unmitigated externalities and to nobody's surprise would like things to stay that way.
- rayiner 6y agoChemical, oil, etc., are competitive markets where cost increases rapidly get passed into consumers. So the most accurate description would be: > The move is backed by chemical, oil, and other industry groups that bear the immediate costs of implementing higher standards, and whose customers (which is almost everybody) enjoy lower prices by dealing with the pollution generated by these activities.
- ipqk 6y agoExcept that while everyone might enjoy the lower prices, the poor and minorities bear the brunt of pollution externalities.
- yostrovs 6y agoAre minorities more susceptible to environmental pollution?
- ip26 6y agoPoor folks can't afford fancy air quality monitors, filtering, well-built houses without leaks, or houses on the clean-air side of town. They are more likely to work outside. Poor communities are almost always on the east side of town because (in the Northern Hemisphere) prevailing west winds usually blow the town's pollution east. This is also how the "right" and "wrong" side of the tracks came about. It bears similarities to heat waves, which mainly kill the poor. You never see headlines about how the last heat wave killed twenty-three investment bankers in their penthouses.
- justin66 6y agoOn a related note: Special Report: U.S. air monitors routinely miss pollution - even refinery explosions [1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-pollution-airmonitors-specialreport/u-s-air-monitors-routinely-miss-pollution-even-refinery-explosions-idUSKBN28B4RT https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-pollution-airmonitors-sp...
- mjcohen 6y agoAnother skirmish in Trump's war on America.