5 ms·

Exactly this. Clean water used to be controversial decades ago, but is now considered essential. Decades from now, I predict that clean air will be considered

by isp 3y ago

Exactly this. Clean water used to be controversial decades ago, but is now considered essential. Decades from now, I predict that clean air will be considered essential also. And just as there are mandates (not recommendations) for clean water, so too do I expect that sooner or later we will have mandates for clean air. With corresponding boost to public health.

sundaeofshock 3y ago
Sadly, the US Supreme Court does not agree that clean air and water are essential and they are very busy dismantling the regulatory state. We have probably reached peak clean air and water. Things will get much dirtier — and dangerous— over the coming decades.
- nxm 3y ago
  Supreme Court simply ruled that EPA exceeded its authority given by lawmakers. Congress should give EPA more authority if its intends for the EPA to do more. The issue we have is government agencies overreaching beyond their remit.
  - sundaeofshock 3y ago
    What about this ruling from 2022? This Supreme Court is hostile to regulations and precedent. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/the-supreme-court-curbed-epas-power-to-regulate-carbon-emissions-from-power-plants-what-comes-next/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/the-supreme-court...
    - rascul 3y ago
      The first paragraph of that link basically says that the Supreme Court found the EPA exceeded its authority given by lawmakers and that Congress should give EPA more authority if its intends for the EPA to do more. The rest is opinions about that finding.
    - deelowe 3y ago
      No. The SC is hostile to regulatory agency overreach as a means of congress not doing it's job. The SC is holding congress accountable. Regulatory agencies should not be able change the law through gradual expansion of scope. In this specific case, state level caps on carbon emissions are well beyond the original scope of the clean air act.
      - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
        The only people who can really hold congress accountable are the voters. Right now it appears that the voters care more about who is “woke” and who isn’t, than about anything else.
        aperson_hello 3y ago
        That's entirely false. Case in point: the veto power. There are checks and balances built into the system. One of them is the supreme court's ability to rule on constitutionality. And it's pretty clear that congress has pretty well abdicated its responsibilities...
    - EMCymatics 3y ago
      It is a symptom of congress not doing its job.
  - enragedcacti 3y ago
    > Supreme Court simply ruled that EPA exceeded its authority given by lawmakers. The supreme court could have abolished the EPA and this statement would still be true. They simply ruled it, no politics happening here! It is completely meaningless to discuss the supreme court without discussing the actual circumstances of the cases and the precedents set by their rulings. Disagree? Just ask Kavanaugh w.r.t. their clean water act ruling, which of course just simply ruled that the EPA exceeded its authority: > The majority had “rewritten the Clean Water Act” and ignored its text as well as “45 years of consistent agency practice,” Kavanaugh wrote. > The statutory text, Kavanaugh wrote, “does not require a continuous surface connection between those wetlands and covered waters.” > By narrowing the (Clean Water) Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands,” Kavanaugh wrote, “the court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.” https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/politics/supreme-court-wetlands-authority-epa/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/politics/supreme-court-wetlan...
    - paddw 3y ago
      Ruling was 8-1, so if politics are happening, they seem mostly bipartisan in this specific EPA case.
      - enragedcacti 3y ago
        It was actually 9-0 in this particular case. All justices agreed that the Sacketts' wetland was not subject to the CWA. What is under contention (and was a 5-4 decision) is under what grounds and what test should be applied going forward: https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/05/supreme-court-curtails-clean-water-act/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/05/supreme-court-curtails-cl...
  - jagraff 3y ago
    But congress won’t, because they can’t. So our air and water will become dirtier. Seems like a pretty big issue to me.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    This supreme court likely holds the opinion that Congress CANNOT delegate it's authority. IMO that's insane, but there are plenty of people who explicitly want that outcome, including the small subset of already rich and powerful people who actually benefit from a government that has to play dumb political games for every little detail of regulation instead of letting a standalone agency do it with express permission.
    - PM_me_your_math 3y ago
      Ah yeas the big ebil corparashuns who steal the wealth of poor people who don't have any wealth...
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  where can i read more about this?
taeric 3y ago
When was clean water in the house controversial? Only controversies I recall were on dumping.
- isp 3y ago
  In 1850s London, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb... John Snow traced a cholera outbreak to contaminated water from a particular water pump, the Broad Street pump. The pump handle was temporarily removed, which stopped people from drinking the contamined water, and so reduced illness. But once the immediate crisis had passed, the pump handle was replaced: > After the cholera epidemic had subsided, government officials replaced the Broad Street pump handle. They had responded only to the urgent threat posed to the population, and afterwards they rejected Snow's theory. To accept his proposal would have meant indirectly accepting the oral-faecal method of transmission of disease, which was too unpleasant for most of the public to contemplate. It took another few years until there was agreement to build the London sewer system.
  - taeric 3y ago
    I'm probably being unfair to history, but that feels more at the feet of bacteria beliefs. That and early plumbing facing a ton of unknowns. Correct me if I'm wrong, but plumbing existed in the 1600s, but wasn't widespread and likely not studied nearly as heavily until much much later. I wouldn't be shocked to know most of what we know on it came after the 1900s.
    - isp 3y ago
      The modern London sewer system was created in the late 19th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewer_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewer_system Before then, the River Thames was essentially an open sewer.
      - taeric 3y ago
        Right, the general "open sewer" is what I would expect on early things. And even there, I'd expect everyone was in favor of "clean" water. Question is on the agreement of if things are clean or not. With bacteria being something folks didn't know about. To be fair, I can see the analogies to the air systems. I just hesitate to think that "clean water" was a controversy.

by isp 3y ago

sundaeofshock 3y ago

Sadly, the US Supreme Court does not agree that clean air and water are essential and they are very busy dismantling the regulatory state. We have probably reached peak clean air and water. Things will get much dirtier — and dangerous— over the coming decades.

nxm 3y ago
Supreme Court simply ruled that EPA exceeded its authority given by lawmakers. Congress should give EPA more authority if its intends for the EPA to do more. The issue we have is government agencies overreaching beyond their remit.
- sundaeofshock 3y ago
  What about this ruling from 2022? This Supreme Court is hostile to regulations and precedent. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/the-supreme-court-curbed-epas-power-to-regulate-carbon-emissions-from-power-plants-what-comes-next/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/the-supreme-court...
  - rascul 3y ago
    The first paragraph of that link basically says that the Supreme Court found the EPA exceeded its authority given by lawmakers and that Congress should give EPA more authority if its intends for the EPA to do more. The rest is opinions about that finding.
  - deelowe 3y ago
    No. The SC is hostile to regulatory agency overreach as a means of congress not doing it's job. The SC is holding congress accountable. Regulatory agencies should not be able change the law through gradual expansion of scope. In this specific case, state level caps on carbon emissions are well beyond the original scope of the clean air act.
    - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
      The only people who can really hold congress accountable are the voters. Right now it appears that the voters care more about who is “woke” and who isn’t, than about anything else.
      - aperson_hello 3y ago
        That's entirely false. Case in point: the veto power. There are checks and balances built into the system. One of them is the supreme court's ability to rule on constitutionality. And it's pretty clear that congress has pretty well abdicated its responsibilities...
  - EMCymatics 3y ago
    It is a symptom of congress not doing its job.
- enragedcacti 3y ago
  > Supreme Court simply ruled that EPA exceeded its authority given by lawmakers. The supreme court could have abolished the EPA and this statement would still be true. They simply ruled it, no politics happening here! It is completely meaningless to discuss the supreme court without discussing the actual circumstances of the cases and the precedents set by their rulings. Disagree? Just ask Kavanaugh w.r.t. their clean water act ruling, which of course just simply ruled that the EPA exceeded its authority: > The majority had “rewritten the Clean Water Act” and ignored its text as well as “45 years of consistent agency practice,” Kavanaugh wrote. > The statutory text, Kavanaugh wrote, “does not require a continuous surface connection between those wetlands and covered waters.” > By narrowing the (Clean Water) Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands,” Kavanaugh wrote, “the court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.” https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/politics/supreme-court-wetlands-authority-epa/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/politics/supreme-court-wetlan...
  - paddw 3y ago
    Ruling was 8-1, so if politics are happening, they seem mostly bipartisan in this specific EPA case.
    - enragedcacti 3y ago
      It was actually 9-0 in this particular case. All justices agreed that the Sacketts' wetland was not subject to the CWA. What is under contention (and was a 5-4 decision) is under what grounds and what test should be applied going forward: https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/05/supreme-court-curtails-clean-water-act/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/05/supreme-court-curtails-cl...
- jagraff 3y ago
  But congress won’t, because they can’t. So our air and water will become dirtier. Seems like a pretty big issue to me.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  This supreme court likely holds the opinion that Congress CANNOT delegate it's authority. IMO that's insane, but there are plenty of people who explicitly want that outcome, including the small subset of already rich and powerful people who actually benefit from a government that has to play dumb political games for every little detail of regulation instead of letting a standalone agency do it with express permission.
  - PM_me_your_math 3y ago
    Ah yeas the big ebil corparashuns who steal the wealth of poor people who don't have any wealth...
jjtheblunt 3y ago
where can i read more about this?

taeric 3y ago

When was clean water in the house controversial? Only controversies I recall were on dumping.

isp 3y ago
In 1850s London, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb... John Snow traced a cholera outbreak to contaminated water from a particular water pump, the Broad Street pump. The pump handle was temporarily removed, which stopped people from drinking the contamined water, and so reduced illness. But once the immediate crisis had passed, the pump handle was replaced: > After the cholera epidemic had subsided, government officials replaced the Broad Street pump handle. They had responded only to the urgent threat posed to the population, and afterwards they rejected Snow's theory. To accept his proposal would have meant indirectly accepting the oral-faecal method of transmission of disease, which was too unpleasant for most of the public to contemplate. It took another few years until there was agreement to build the London sewer system.
- taeric 3y ago
  I'm probably being unfair to history, but that feels more at the feet of bacteria beliefs. That and early plumbing facing a ton of unknowns. Correct me if I'm wrong, but plumbing existed in the 1600s, but wasn't widespread and likely not studied nearly as heavily until much much later. I wouldn't be shocked to know most of what we know on it came after the 1900s.
  - isp 3y ago
    The modern London sewer system was created in the late 19th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewer_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewer_system Before then, the River Thames was essentially an open sewer.
    - taeric 3y ago
      Right, the general "open sewer" is what I would expect on early things. And even there, I'd expect everyone was in favor of "clean" water. Question is on the agreement of if things are clean or not. With bacteria being something folks didn't know about. To be fair, I can see the analogies to the air systems. I just hesitate to think that "clean water" was a controversy.