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Environmental regulations were sited without clear specification of what exactly the issue is. There is strong precedence on why we need those regulations to p

Environmental regulations were sited without clear specification of what exactly the issue is. There is strong precedence on why we need those regulations to prevent issues that the "future" then has to deal with. How many super fund sites are there in the USA today and how many are a result from companies being able to get away with lax environmental regulations at the time? China is already dealing with this by forcing heavily polluting industries to shut down, cut off power, unbreathable air in cities, etc.. all because of lax environment regulations to begin with.

octoberfranklin 5y ago
I agree, but the US has a very shortsighted attitude here. If you place regulatory burdens on some undesirable behavior (e.g. pollution) but do not place compensatory tariffs on the import of products resulting from that exact same behavior, you're not doing anything to reduce the undesirable behavior. You're simply encouraging people to do the undesirable things elsewhere. This not only fails to accomplish the goal, but also significantly weakens the country. The exact same problem totally undermines labor policy and unions (except those of government employees). There really ought to be some sort of automatic mechanism for "if X is illegal/taxed/regulated then importing the result of X happening overseas is forbidden/taxed/regulated". The US already has a specific, very efficient court that does this for one specific illegal act (patent infringement); it wouldn't be difficult to expand that scope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_International_Trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Interna...
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  To be fair, for most types of pollution, moving it "elsewhere" solves your problem.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
The way the regulatory environment works in the US is something like this. Something bad happens, so new regulations are imposed. The regulators don't always know what they're doing and frequently make poor cost benefit decisions. Meanwhile, the existing regulations usually already prohibited whatever the offender did, and the bad thing happened because they were breaking existing law, so they also get sued or prosecuted etc. under existing law anyway. Despite this being completely nuts, it kind of works to deter pollution. The new regulations are like extra punishment for screwing up. The company, and the entire industry, has to pay more in regulatory compliance forever because they did a bad thing. So they really don't want to do that. The problem is that the effect is cumulative and doesn't just impact the offender. Every time someone breaks the law in a high profile way, the compliance costs go up. They never go down. The new laws are useless because the bad thing has been prohibited for decades and the actual cause was companies violating existing laws. So the more time passes, the more regulations we get and the less competitive the US becomes. Somebody who knows what they're doing needs to go through the existing regulations and strip out the ones that are wasteful and redundant while leaving the ones that efficiently prohibit bad acts. But the political process is terrible at handling details like that. If someone proposes getting rid of an environmental regulation, it doesn't matter what it says. You can predict who will support it and who will oppose it. And it's the same people in support and opposition whether it's an actually necessary regulation with a moderate burden and a very large important reason for existing, or a useless web of red tape which is fully redundant with existing prohibitions but makes everything cost more for no benefit.
specialist 5y ago
I'd like full life cycle accounting. Or something to that effect. Basically "you broke it, you bought." I have no idea how the accounting and finance would work. Bonds, insurance, set asides... Putting cleanup on the balance sheet would then incentivize both prevention (harm reduction) and investing in new technologies. Like maybe some sci-fi stuff like new microbes to eat toxins, which could then be another biz opportunity.
- therealcamino 5y ago
  It's not a balance sheet problem or an accounting problem or a finance problem. Environmental regulations exist to prevent harms to human life and ecosystems that we deem unacceptable to account for as money damages (sorry about your dad, here's $800,000.)
  - specialist 5y ago
    How's that strategy working out? I prefer results over correctness.
    - therealcamino 5y ago
      It's working pretty well in the US -- not perfect, with uneven progress, but very measurable. The Cuyahoga River hasn't caught on fire in about 50 years.

octoberfranklin 5y ago

I agree, but the US has a very shortsighted attitude here. If you place regulatory burdens on some undesirable behavior (e.g. pollution) but do not place compensatory tariffs on the import of products resulting from that exact same behavior, you're not doing anything to reduce the undesirable behavior. You're simply encouraging people to do the undesirable things elsewhere. This not only fails to accomplish the goal, but also significantly weakens the country. The exact same problem totally undermines labor policy and unions (except those of government employees). There really ought to be some sort of automatic mechanism for "if X is illegal/taxed/regulated then importing the result of X happening overseas is forbidden/taxed/regulated". The US already has a specific, very efficient court that does this for one specific illegal act (patent infringement); it wouldn't be difficult to expand that scope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_International_Trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Interna...

fennecfoxen 5y ago
To be fair, for most types of pollution, moving it "elsewhere" solves your problem.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

The way the regulatory environment works in the US is something like this. Something bad happens, so new regulations are imposed. The regulators don't always know what they're doing and frequently make poor cost benefit decisions. Meanwhile, the existing regulations usually already prohibited whatever the offender did, and the bad thing happened because they were breaking existing law, so they also get sued or prosecuted etc. under existing law anyway. Despite this being completely nuts, it kind of works to deter pollution. The new regulations are like extra punishment for screwing up. The company, and the entire industry, has to pay more in regulatory compliance forever because they did a bad thing. So they really don't want to do that. The problem is that the effect is cumulative and doesn't just impact the offender. Every time someone breaks the law in a high profile way, the compliance costs go up. They never go down. The new laws are useless because the bad thing has been prohibited for decades and the actual cause was companies violating existing laws. So the more time passes, the more regulations we get and the less competitive the US becomes. Somebody who knows what they're doing needs to go through the existing regulations and strip out the ones that are wasteful and redundant while leaving the ones that efficiently prohibit bad acts. But the political process is terrible at handling details like that. If someone proposes getting rid of an environmental regulation, it doesn't matter what it says. You can predict who will support it and who will oppose it. And it's the same people in support and opposition whether it's an actually necessary regulation with a moderate burden and a very large important reason for existing, or a useless web of red tape which is fully redundant with existing prohibitions but makes everything cost more for no benefit.

specialist 5y ago

I'd like full life cycle accounting. Or something to that effect. Basically "you broke it, you bought." I have no idea how the accounting and finance would work. Bonds, insurance, set asides... Putting cleanup on the balance sheet would then incentivize both prevention (harm reduction) and investing in new technologies. Like maybe some sci-fi stuff like new microbes to eat toxins, which could then be another biz opportunity.

therealcamino 5y ago
It's not a balance sheet problem or an accounting problem or a finance problem. Environmental regulations exist to prevent harms to human life and ecosystems that we deem unacceptable to account for as money damages (sorry about your dad, here's $800,000.)
- specialist 5y ago
  How's that strategy working out? I prefer results over correctness.
  - therealcamino 5y ago
    It's working pretty well in the US -- not perfect, with uneven progress, but very measurable. The Cuyahoga River hasn't caught on fire in about 50 years.