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Are you talking about the air pollution from idling? It's elitist because it's minor, and not the sort of thing that citizens would naturally try to prosecute e

Are you talking about the air pollution from idling? It's elitist because it's minor, and not the sort of thing that citizens would naturally try to prosecute each other for. Should citizens police each other for eating beef? Driving older cars? Not passing smog tests? Not supporting nuclear power? Cooking with natural gas? Flying on planes? It's not the kind of society I want to live in. It's not the kind of relationship I want to have with my neighbors. They're the kind of situations that call for carrots more than sticks, and certainly not secret police. Edit: looks like the idling law was primarily sponsored by a city councilmember back in 2015: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/council-member-wants-to-train-citizens-to-spot-turn-in-illegal-idlers/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/council-member-wants-to... It wasn't like a bunch of citizens got together to tackle air pollution, and somehow came up with that as the most sensible solution (vs, say, emissions standards or the autostop/autostart systems in newer cars, or better transit and biking). It was just some bureaucrat trying to score cheap political points by having citizens snitch on delivery drivers and such who are already underpaid and just trying to get by and do their jobs. Did this measurably improve air pollution in NYC? No, it just gave rise to a cottage industry of the equivalent of ambulance chasers.

otterley 5y ago
It sounds to me like you just don’t believe cutting back on air pollution is important. Perhaps if you spent more time in a heavily-polluted place such as many south Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, etc.) or Mexico City, or if you’d grown up in the smoggy hellhole that was L.A. in the 1970s, you’d feel differently. For wide swaths of the population, it’s definitely not “minor.” We also have an entire planet to think about. Climate change is real, and we want our children’s children to continue to live here and for the complex ecosystem that makes it work to continue to operate healthily. To call the very justified concerns about future survival as “elitist” is unfairly dismissive.
- technobabbler 5y ago
  Sorry, I was editing my post while you replied, so you didn't see the bottom update. For what it's worth, I grew up in a polluted city, studied climate science in school, and work in renewables. It's not that I don't think air pollution is a big deal, it's that I don't think the idle car secret police are a good way to deal with air pollution. CAFE standards? Great. Point-source air pollution tracking and fines, from factories and such? Cool. Renewables-backed electric cars? Great. Cleaner, low-carbon grid mixes? Yes. Divestment from fossil fuels? Cool. All of these are actually hugely beneficial actions, but they don't require the state to turn citizens into informers against each other for petty everyday actions. Air pollution is your typical tragedy of the commons situation, borne of the collective actions of millions of people living in an industrialized society and just trying to live their lives. It's not the sort of thing worth putting a bounty on, IMO, at least not at the individual level. At the corporate level it's a different story, cuz that's a cost of doing business and accounting for externalities and such. All of those are better solutions than criminalizing trivial behavior and fostering a culture of distrust, all for little to no measurable improvement in air quality, just to satiate the political agenda of a politician. It's the difference between cheap political points for low-hanging fruit, vs doing the actual useful and hard work of setting sustainable climate policies that don't regressively hurt the working class while also turning citizens against each other. It's that sort of blindness to the needs of the average person that makes this sort of thing elitist.
  - otterley 5y ago
    I don’t necessarily quibble with your concerns about the right way to achieve the outcomes we all seek. But please don’t paint real concerns about health as “elitist.” If anything, people who don’t have to worry about these things — who get the privilege to live in suburbs with wide-open spaces, blue skies, and clean air — are the true elites. Being able to live this way is the dream of billions of our underprivileged fellow human beings who grow up in filth and overcrowding.
    - technobabbler 5y ago
      Sorry, but I have to disagree. It IS elitist, the sort of law that a detached lawmaker would make, with no concern about its impacts on regular people. Again, do we outlaw beef consumption, road trips, flying, older cars, leaving the lights on when nobody's home, more than 2 kids...? All these things contribute to air pollution, but we don't want them to be illegal. Yes, even if it means worsening climate change. If idling is such a big problem, legislating adaptive technology (auto on/off) is a better solution. If it is really about the billions of underprivileged humans and animals suffering from climate change, we need mass mobilization on the scale of the Manhattan Project or bigger, across multiple coordinated nations... not hunting down people who idle their cars more than 2 minutes. It's just the sort of thing that's neither necessary nor sufficient for addressing climate change, yet with a big social cost (distrust), which makes the working class hate environmentalists even more. It is the exact kind of elitist regulation popular in the 90s and early 2000s that caused a huge cultural backlash and created the climate divide we see now. It's not just regressive but counterproductive.
      - otterley 5y ago
        Unfortunately I think you are laboring under a false premise, namely, that folks in the U.S. are "regular people." With our (relatively) clean air and water, room to spread out, big houses, big vehicles, etc., we are all elites compared to the majority of people in the rest of the world. Compare against most of the world who get by on far less than we do: they don't have huge vehicles and homes; they don't eat much beef; etc. So it's not about elites vs. "regular people" here, it's about middle-class elites vs. other middle-class elites fighting over whether Johnny gets to buy and use the toys his middle-class income gives him the privilege to play with, and what kind of sacrifices we will make for the greater good. It's not regulation that is causing a cultural backlash: it's intentional and insidious cultural warmongering by a largely silent but even-more-insidious class of elites (the uber-wealthy) who fund think tanks, hire armies of lobbyists to press Congress, and discover and fund media personalities such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to pit Americans against one another and keep them distracted away from the even bigger issues we face. Democratic and existential crises are just collateral damage to the interests of these people. This war of the narratives traces its roots to the 1960s, where the country was beginning to come to grips with racism (Civil Rights Act) and the Vietnam War. White middle-class and Greatest-Generation fear of hippies, Blacks, homosexuals, atheists, and others was easy for politicians and monied interests to leverage. Soon, think tanks and lobbyists started pressing Congress (along with the backing of Reagan, who was propelled to victory by the Moral Majority who brought politics into church) to deregulate the airwaves, leading to even more divisiveness in the media. Communication consultants like Frank Luntz (author of the so-called "death tax") were hired to sharpen the divide. And Americans are sadly and unwittingly falling for this manipulation, hook, line, and sinker. Now it's the freaking Baby Boomers (who were part of the '60s counterculture and became the very thing they fought against) who are ensnared in it, and I fear my fellow Gen-Xers are being also being led into this trap. I, for one, refuse to accept that any way other than massive world coordination is a pointless exercise. Major change is often the aggregate of small changes anyway. And being willing to make sacrifices in the name of health before others do (especially others who can less afford to make such changes) is what admirable and moral leaders do.

otterley 5y ago

It sounds to me like you just don’t believe cutting back on air pollution is important. Perhaps if you spent more time in a heavily-polluted place such as many south Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, etc.) or Mexico City, or if you’d grown up in the smoggy hellhole that was L.A. in the 1970s, you’d feel differently. For wide swaths of the population, it’s definitely not “minor.” We also have an entire planet to think about. Climate change is real, and we want our children’s children to continue to live here and for the complex ecosystem that makes it work to continue to operate healthily. To call the very justified concerns about future survival as “elitist” is unfairly dismissive.

technobabbler 5y ago
Sorry, I was editing my post while you replied, so you didn't see the bottom update. For what it's worth, I grew up in a polluted city, studied climate science in school, and work in renewables. It's not that I don't think air pollution is a big deal, it's that I don't think the idle car secret police are a good way to deal with air pollution. CAFE standards? Great. Point-source air pollution tracking and fines, from factories and such? Cool. Renewables-backed electric cars? Great. Cleaner, low-carbon grid mixes? Yes. Divestment from fossil fuels? Cool. All of these are actually hugely beneficial actions, but they don't require the state to turn citizens into informers against each other for petty everyday actions. Air pollution is your typical tragedy of the commons situation, borne of the collective actions of millions of people living in an industrialized society and just trying to live their lives. It's not the sort of thing worth putting a bounty on, IMO, at least not at the individual level. At the corporate level it's a different story, cuz that's a cost of doing business and accounting for externalities and such. All of those are better solutions than criminalizing trivial behavior and fostering a culture of distrust, all for little to no measurable improvement in air quality, just to satiate the political agenda of a politician. It's the difference between cheap political points for low-hanging fruit, vs doing the actual useful and hard work of setting sustainable climate policies that don't regressively hurt the working class while also turning citizens against each other. It's that sort of blindness to the needs of the average person that makes this sort of thing elitist.
- otterley 5y ago
  I don’t necessarily quibble with your concerns about the right way to achieve the outcomes we all seek. But please don’t paint real concerns about health as “elitist.” If anything, people who don’t have to worry about these things — who get the privilege to live in suburbs with wide-open spaces, blue skies, and clean air — are the true elites. Being able to live this way is the dream of billions of our underprivileged fellow human beings who grow up in filth and overcrowding.
  - technobabbler 5y ago
    Sorry, but I have to disagree. It IS elitist, the sort of law that a detached lawmaker would make, with no concern about its impacts on regular people. Again, do we outlaw beef consumption, road trips, flying, older cars, leaving the lights on when nobody's home, more than 2 kids...? All these things contribute to air pollution, but we don't want them to be illegal. Yes, even if it means worsening climate change. If idling is such a big problem, legislating adaptive technology (auto on/off) is a better solution. If it is really about the billions of underprivileged humans and animals suffering from climate change, we need mass mobilization on the scale of the Manhattan Project or bigger, across multiple coordinated nations... not hunting down people who idle their cars more than 2 minutes. It's just the sort of thing that's neither necessary nor sufficient for addressing climate change, yet with a big social cost (distrust), which makes the working class hate environmentalists even more. It is the exact kind of elitist regulation popular in the 90s and early 2000s that caused a huge cultural backlash and created the climate divide we see now. It's not just regressive but counterproductive.
    - otterley 5y ago
      Unfortunately I think you are laboring under a false premise, namely, that folks in the U.S. are "regular people." With our (relatively) clean air and water, room to spread out, big houses, big vehicles, etc., we are all elites compared to the majority of people in the rest of the world. Compare against most of the world who get by on far less than we do: they don't have huge vehicles and homes; they don't eat much beef; etc. So it's not about elites vs. "regular people" here, it's about middle-class elites vs. other middle-class elites fighting over whether Johnny gets to buy and use the toys his middle-class income gives him the privilege to play with, and what kind of sacrifices we will make for the greater good. It's not regulation that is causing a cultural backlash: it's intentional and insidious cultural warmongering by a largely silent but even-more-insidious class of elites (the uber-wealthy) who fund think tanks, hire armies of lobbyists to press Congress, and discover and fund media personalities such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to pit Americans against one another and keep them distracted away from the even bigger issues we face. Democratic and existential crises are just collateral damage to the interests of these people. This war of the narratives traces its roots to the 1960s, where the country was beginning to come to grips with racism (Civil Rights Act) and the Vietnam War. White middle-class and Greatest-Generation fear of hippies, Blacks, homosexuals, atheists, and others was easy for politicians and monied interests to leverage. Soon, think tanks and lobbyists started pressing Congress (along with the backing of Reagan, who was propelled to victory by the Moral Majority who brought politics into church) to deregulate the airwaves, leading to even more divisiveness in the media. Communication consultants like Frank Luntz (author of the so-called "death tax") were hired to sharpen the divide. And Americans are sadly and unwittingly falling for this manipulation, hook, line, and sinker. Now it's the freaking Baby Boomers (who were part of the '60s counterculture and became the very thing they fought against) who are ensnared in it, and I fear my fellow Gen-Xers are being also being led into this trap. I, for one, refuse to accept that any way other than massive world coordination is a pointless exercise. Major change is often the aggregate of small changes anyway. And being willing to make sacrifices in the name of health before others do (especially others who can less afford to make such changes) is what admirable and moral leaders do.