15 ms·

America Is Backsliding Toward Its Most Polluted Era

151 points by pmags 2y ago

seydor 2y ago
what I don't understand is why post-globalization has been equated with deglobalization
- zweifuss 2y ago
  Possibly because of the Cold War experience. Also because globalisation is slowing down and we see some reshoreing already.
- sorcerer-mar 2y ago
  Can you articulate the difference? This is the first I've heard the term "post-globalization."
  - AlecSchueler 2y ago
    Post-globalisation is whatever comes after the globalisation period. It's a chapter of the history books still being written and as such can still take many forms, of which scaling back on globalisation is one.
    - sorcerer-mar 2y ago
      And what are some of the others that are "moving away from globalization but not scaling back on it?"
      - AlecSchueler 1y ago
        Moving past, not moving away. Hyper-globalisation could be an example of post-globalisation as well.
RajT88 2y ago
I've observed this weird cognitive dissonance with outdoorsmen, since I am quite fond of fishing. They tend to be a pretty hardcore MAGA bunch, but also don't like pollution because it messes up their sport. When you ask them about stuff like this (how can you support someone who pretty openly wants to mess up your pastime?), they get mad or change the subject. I get it - people are complicated and can care about many things at once. Nobody likes it when someone is seemingly poking at their belief systems. Still - you'd think it'd give them some kind of pause.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  It's almost like people are complicated and when you are forced to choose between two parties you almost always go for the stronger male person
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    People are complicated and their behavior can be predicted by a single variable?
    - fifilura 2y ago
      I thought the GP comment was interesting. The hypothesis that if the decision becomes too complicated you just give up and fallback to the strong male. Like the reptile brain gets enabled if you loose the overview.
      - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
        This is what I meant. Thanks for clarifying.
    - MonitorBird 2y ago
      Behaviour in a closed system choosing between the alpha, sound familiar to any animal behaviour? Oh, but we are so much more than that. We aren't animals, we are developed people. Fascinating behaviour isn't it, Muppet.
nelblu 2y ago
https://archive.is/uvzCD https://archive.is/uvzCD
mathieuh 2y ago
One argument which I find profoundly stupid is the "well it doesn't matter what we do, look at China". In reality doing things more cleanly can make a huge difference to your local environment. Do you want to live right next to a coal-fired power plant just because that's what they do in China? Do you want to walk past roads clogged with dirty, polluting cars?
- wormlord 2y ago
  China has outlined plans to reduce their environmental impact in their 5-year plan. One can say "wow do you really trust the CCP?" but at least they have a publicly available plan. https://en.ndrc.gov.cn/policies/202303/P020230425398570720357.pdf https://en.ndrc.gov.cn/policies/202303/P02023042539857072035...
- energy123 2y ago
  That's lying with statistics. They arrived at their conclusion and then cherry picked a metric that supports it. Per-capita emissions is the only metric that has any meaning, since it isn't altered by historical happenstance as to whether a country is large or was split into multiple countries due to historical events. If China split into two countries tomorrow, suddenly they would be doing better on this deceitful metric but the ground truth has not changed one bit.
  - Whoppertime 1y ago
    Per capita emissions is effected by population, and historical events that influence that capita being measured, like the Covid 19 outbreak. If you have 100,000 people living in a town emitting 100,000 tons of emissions and 10% of the population died due to happenstance, epidemiological or otherwise so you now have 90,000 people emitting 100,000 tons of emissions and the per capita rate went up despite no change in their production method or the amount of emissions they are producing.
- thrance 2y ago
  Trump started calling coal "beautiful clean coal". At this point I think he could convince his followers that the sky is red and no one would bat an eye.
josefritzishere 2y ago
I'm not excited for more szewage in the water https://www.jw.com/news/insights-epa-wastewater-permitting-authority-decision/ https://www.jw.com/news/insights-epa-wastewater-permitting-a...
JKCalhoun 2y ago
> projected would, in that year alone, prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths and 800,000 cases of asthma, reaping up to $46 billion in health benefits. That's the even crazier part - the savings in health benefits. Not sure what it takes to motivate even the most selfish out there.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  I think the crazy part is that the math of 46 billion divided by 804,500 is almost 60k/case. Maybe this is also highlighting a different problem.
  - pintxo 2y ago
    One 1-2k/year seems rather cheap to treat an ongoing chronic illness? As asthma will be an ongoing problem when started?
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      Asthma is a “solved problem” medically, the rest is just rent-seeking.
- chewbacha 2y ago
  Take away the welfare and stop paying taxes. Then there’s no health benefits to spend on. Pretty sure this is why they are dismantling Medicaid and Medicare now. It’s all aligned to put us back into 1890s when billionaires ran everything and people lived in tenement housing.
- goda90 2y ago
  Couldn't that also be reframed as less profit for the healthcare industry?
  - dymk 2y ago
    It could be reframed as less loss for the insurance companies
rayiner 2y ago
Air quality improvements seem to have leveled off in the second Obama administration, and stayed more or less the same through the first Trump and the Biden administration: https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=c22b170a699840ab96d19cc293c04951 https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=c2... News media ran this exact story back in 2019. E.g. https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-air-quality-declines-years-improvement/story?id=66582569 https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-air-quality-declines-years-impr.... This particular article is a gem, because it portrayed a 5.5% increase from 2016-2018 is a regression. There was no follow-up article when air pollution decreased more than 40% the next year. Nor was there an article when pollution spiked 76% from the Trump-administration low during the Biden administration.
- 9283409232 2y ago
  Air pollution decreased the following year because of COVID and the fact that people were in lockdown and couldn't go anywhere. No one was driving and the number of flights were reduced. There were plenty of stories about how COVID was helping reduce pollution. Here's one as an example: https://www.businessinsider.com/before-after-photos-show-less-air-pollution-during-pandemic-lockdown?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/before-after-photos-show-les....
  - chneu 2y ago
    This was huge news in the environmental world. Unfortunately, it wound up being really depressing. We showed that we could substantially reduce emissions with behavior changes. Then we went right back to business as usual and actually increased emissions. So, can we do it? Absolutely. Are we going to? Absolutely not.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    No, the following year was 2019. The covid shutdowns were the year after that. Air pollution actually increases from 2019 to 2020.
- intermerda 2y ago
  > This particular article is a gem, because it portrayed a 5.5% increase from 2016-2018 is a regression. Did you read the article? It prefaces with Trump's false claim and provides proof of his lying. > There was no follow-up article when air pollution decreased more than 40% the next year. Perhaps Trump did not repeat that specific lie next year? > Nor was there an article when pollution spiked 76% from the Trump-administration low during the Biden administration. I've seen plenty of articles about how air pollution was at record lows during COVID.
Reimersholme 2y ago
[dead]
throw0101c 2y ago
Perhaps somewhat related: in the Canada we have/had a price on carbon to help meet our goals per the Paris Agreement. The goals were negotiated by the Conservative government of PM Stephen Harper, and accepted by a new Liberal government under Trudeau. A national price on carbon was introduced (money was collected, but then refunded to individual annually/quarterly), but provinces could implement something different if it met the same goals (Quebec and (at first) Ontario went with cap-and-trade). The federal Liberals were attacked for a tax grab (even though monies were refunded, and the SCOC ruled it was not a tax): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada Those that attacked the federal Liberals were generally [Cc]onservatives… never mind that folks like Milton Friedman thought putting a price/tax on pollution was a good 'market based' mechanism: > In 1979, Friedman expressed support for environmental taxes in general in an interview on The Phil Donahue Show, saying "the best way to [deal with pollution] is to impose a tax on the cost of the pollutants emitted by a car and make an incentive for car manufacturers and for consumers to keep down the amount of pollution."[157] In Free to Choose, Friedman reiterated his support for environmental taxes as compared with increased environmental regulation, stating "The preservation of the environment and the avoidance of undue pollution are real problems and they are problems concerning which the government has an important role to play. ... Most economists agree that a far better way to control pollution than the present method of specific regulation and supervision is to introduce market discipline by imposing effluent charges."[158][159] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman#Governmental_involvement_in_the_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman#Governmental_i... And folks like Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker recommended something similar for the US: * https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Carbon_Dividends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Car... Some provincial leaders looked at other options to carbon pricing and found the alternatives would cost more: * https://nationalpost.com/news/scott-moe-says-saskatchewan-considered-carbon-tax-alternatives-but-found-them-too-costly https://nationalpost.com/news/scott-moe-says-saskatchewan-co...
- rbetts 2y ago
  There are some US States that participate in solar credit markets. Basically, utilities are required to purchase some number of solar production credits. Solar energy producers can sell their credits to these utilities. https://www.srectrade.com/markets/rps/srec/ https://www.srectrade.com/markets/rps/srec/
energy123 2y ago
One side effect of the tariffs will be that oil and gas will be more attractive to developers relative to renewables. Oil down in price due to recession, and solar and storage up in price due to tariffs, and added political risks and harder permitting on federal lands. Last year, the US nearly stopped installing fossil fuels on a net basis thanks to Wright's Law price declines and federal incentives (IRA).
- chneu 2y ago
  This is false. The cost of building is going up because of tariffs. It isn't going to be profitable to build new wells. Wells, right now, are about 30% more expensive to build vs pre-tariffs, but this is likely to keep changing. Add in that oil is dropping in price to the point where many wells are going to be shut down because it isn't profitable to operate them, and this is going to have the opposite effect. ~$60/barrel seems to be that point right now. We're trading at/around $60 right now. Oil and Gas are going to become less attractive to investors because of this. Solar and wind are already dirt cheap, tariffs aren't really going to change that THAT much. They'll still be cheaper and a better investment than Oil/Coal/Gas.
b450 2y ago
I clicked through to this article about the chairman of the EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee: https://revealnews.org/article/trumps-air-pollution-adviser-clean-air-saves-no-lives/ https://revealnews.org/article/trumps-air-pollution-adviser-... Making a career out of making the case for air pollution. I hope the money is worth it. This guy should have to live and raise his kids next to a coal plant.
xtiansimon 2y ago
> “The EPA told businesses last month that they can simply email the agency if they want an exemption from certain pollution regulations…” I’d like to see the FOIA request results listing those businesses.

151 points by pmags 2y ago

seydor 2y ago

what I don't understand is why post-globalization has been equated with deglobalization

zweifuss 2y ago
Possibly because of the Cold War experience. Also because globalisation is slowing down and we see some reshoreing already.
sorcerer-mar 2y ago
Can you articulate the difference? This is the first I've heard the term "post-globalization."
- AlecSchueler 2y ago
  Post-globalisation is whatever comes after the globalisation period. It's a chapter of the history books still being written and as such can still take many forms, of which scaling back on globalisation is one.
  - sorcerer-mar 2y ago
    And what are some of the others that are "moving away from globalization but not scaling back on it?"
    - AlecSchueler 1y ago
      Moving past, not moving away. Hyper-globalisation could be an example of post-globalisation as well.

RajT88 2y ago

I've observed this weird cognitive dissonance with outdoorsmen, since I am quite fond of fishing. They tend to be a pretty hardcore MAGA bunch, but also don't like pollution because it messes up their sport. When you ask them about stuff like this (how can you support someone who pretty openly wants to mess up your pastime?), they get mad or change the subject. I get it - people are complicated and can care about many things at once. Nobody likes it when someone is seemingly poking at their belief systems. Still - you'd think it'd give them some kind of pause.

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
It's almost like people are complicated and when you are forced to choose between two parties you almost always go for the stronger male person
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  People are complicated and their behavior can be predicted by a single variable?
  - fifilura 2y ago
    I thought the GP comment was interesting. The hypothesis that if the decision becomes too complicated you just give up and fallback to the strong male. Like the reptile brain gets enabled if you loose the overview.
    - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
      This is what I meant. Thanks for clarifying.
  - MonitorBird 2y ago
    Behaviour in a closed system choosing between the alpha, sound familiar to any animal behaviour? Oh, but we are so much more than that. We aren't animals, we are developed people. Fascinating behaviour isn't it, Muppet.

nelblu 2y ago

https://archive.is/uvzCD https://archive.is/uvzCD

mathieuh 2y ago

One argument which I find profoundly stupid is the "well it doesn't matter what we do, look at China". In reality doing things more cleanly can make a huge difference to your local environment. Do you want to live right next to a coal-fired power plant just because that's what they do in China? Do you want to walk past roads clogged with dirty, polluting cars?

wormlord 2y ago
China has outlined plans to reduce their environmental impact in their 5-year plan. One can say "wow do you really trust the CCP?" but at least they have a publicly available plan. https://en.ndrc.gov.cn/policies/202303/P020230425398570720357.pdf https://en.ndrc.gov.cn/policies/202303/P02023042539857072035...
energy123 2y ago
That's lying with statistics. They arrived at their conclusion and then cherry picked a metric that supports it. Per-capita emissions is the only metric that has any meaning, since it isn't altered by historical happenstance as to whether a country is large or was split into multiple countries due to historical events. If China split into two countries tomorrow, suddenly they would be doing better on this deceitful metric but the ground truth has not changed one bit.
- Whoppertime 1y ago
  Per capita emissions is effected by population, and historical events that influence that capita being measured, like the Covid 19 outbreak. If you have 100,000 people living in a town emitting 100,000 tons of emissions and 10% of the population died due to happenstance, epidemiological or otherwise so you now have 90,000 people emitting 100,000 tons of emissions and the per capita rate went up despite no change in their production method or the amount of emissions they are producing.
thrance 2y ago
Trump started calling coal "beautiful clean coal". At this point I think he could convince his followers that the sky is red and no one would bat an eye.

josefritzishere 2y ago

I'm not excited for more szewage in the water https://www.jw.com/news/insights-epa-wastewater-permitting-authority-decision/ https://www.jw.com/news/insights-epa-wastewater-permitting-a...

JKCalhoun 2y ago

> projected would, in that year alone, prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths and 800,000 cases of asthma, reaping up to $46 billion in health benefits. That's the even crazier part - the savings in health benefits. Not sure what it takes to motivate even the most selfish out there.

dgfitz 2y ago
I think the crazy part is that the math of 46 billion divided by 804,500 is almost 60k/case. Maybe this is also highlighting a different problem.
- pintxo 2y ago
  One 1-2k/year seems rather cheap to treat an ongoing chronic illness? As asthma will be an ongoing problem when started?
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    Asthma is a “solved problem” medically, the rest is just rent-seeking.
chewbacha 2y ago
Take away the welfare and stop paying taxes. Then there’s no health benefits to spend on. Pretty sure this is why they are dismantling Medicaid and Medicare now. It’s all aligned to put us back into 1890s when billionaires ran everything and people lived in tenement housing.
goda90 2y ago
Couldn't that also be reframed as less profit for the healthcare industry?
- dymk 2y ago
  It could be reframed as less loss for the insurance companies

rayiner 2y ago

Air quality improvements seem to have leveled off in the second Obama administration, and stayed more or less the same through the first Trump and the Biden administration: https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=c22b170a699840ab96d19cc293c04951 https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=c2... News media ran this exact story back in 2019. E.g. https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-air-quality-declines-years-improvement/story?id=66582569 https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-air-quality-declines-years-impr.... This particular article is a gem, because it portrayed a 5.5% increase from 2016-2018 is a regression. There was no follow-up article when air pollution decreased more than 40% the next year. Nor was there an article when pollution spiked 76% from the Trump-administration low during the Biden administration.

9283409232 2y ago
Air pollution decreased the following year because of COVID and the fact that people were in lockdown and couldn't go anywhere. No one was driving and the number of flights were reduced. There were plenty of stories about how COVID was helping reduce pollution. Here's one as an example: https://www.businessinsider.com/before-after-photos-show-less-air-pollution-during-pandemic-lockdown?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/before-after-photos-show-les....
- chneu 2y ago
  This was huge news in the environmental world. Unfortunately, it wound up being really depressing. We showed that we could substantially reduce emissions with behavior changes. Then we went right back to business as usual and actually increased emissions. So, can we do it? Absolutely. Are we going to? Absolutely not.
- rayiner 2y ago
  No, the following year was 2019. The covid shutdowns were the year after that. Air pollution actually increases from 2019 to 2020.
intermerda 2y ago
> This particular article is a gem, because it portrayed a 5.5% increase from 2016-2018 is a regression. Did you read the article? It prefaces with Trump's false claim and provides proof of his lying. > There was no follow-up article when air pollution decreased more than 40% the next year. Perhaps Trump did not repeat that specific lie next year? > Nor was there an article when pollution spiked 76% from the Trump-administration low during the Biden administration. I've seen plenty of articles about how air pollution was at record lows during COVID.

Reimersholme 2y ago

[dead]

throw0101c 2y ago

Perhaps somewhat related: in the Canada we have/had a price on carbon to help meet our goals per the Paris Agreement. The goals were negotiated by the Conservative government of PM Stephen Harper, and accepted by a new Liberal government under Trudeau. A national price on carbon was introduced (money was collected, but then refunded to individual annually/quarterly), but provinces could implement something different if it met the same goals (Quebec and (at first) Ontario went with cap-and-trade). The federal Liberals were attacked for a tax grab (even though monies were refunded, and the SCOC ruled it was not a tax): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada Those that attacked the federal Liberals were generally [Cc]onservatives… never mind that folks like Milton Friedman thought putting a price/tax on pollution was a good 'market based' mechanism: > In 1979, Friedman expressed support for environmental taxes in general in an interview on The Phil Donahue Show, saying "the best way to [deal with pollution] is to impose a tax on the cost of the pollutants emitted by a car and make an incentive for car manufacturers and for consumers to keep down the amount of pollution."[157] In Free to Choose, Friedman reiterated his support for environmental taxes as compared with increased environmental regulation, stating "The preservation of the environment and the avoidance of undue pollution are real problems and they are problems concerning which the government has an important role to play. ... Most economists agree that a far better way to control pollution than the present method of specific regulation and supervision is to introduce market discipline by imposing effluent charges."[158][159] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman#Governmental_involvement_in_the_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman#Governmental_i... And folks like Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker recommended something similar for the US: * https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Carbon_Dividends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Car... Some provincial leaders looked at other options to carbon pricing and found the alternatives would cost more: * https://nationalpost.com/news/scott-moe-says-saskatchewan-considered-carbon-tax-alternatives-but-found-them-too-costly https://nationalpost.com/news/scott-moe-says-saskatchewan-co...

rbetts 2y ago
There are some US States that participate in solar credit markets. Basically, utilities are required to purchase some number of solar production credits. Solar energy producers can sell their credits to these utilities. https://www.srectrade.com/markets/rps/srec/ https://www.srectrade.com/markets/rps/srec/

energy123 2y ago

One side effect of the tariffs will be that oil and gas will be more attractive to developers relative to renewables. Oil down in price due to recession, and solar and storage up in price due to tariffs, and added political risks and harder permitting on federal lands. Last year, the US nearly stopped installing fossil fuels on a net basis thanks to Wright's Law price declines and federal incentives (IRA).

chneu 2y ago
This is false. The cost of building is going up because of tariffs. It isn't going to be profitable to build new wells. Wells, right now, are about 30% more expensive to build vs pre-tariffs, but this is likely to keep changing. Add in that oil is dropping in price to the point where many wells are going to be shut down because it isn't profitable to operate them, and this is going to have the opposite effect. ~$60/barrel seems to be that point right now. We're trading at/around $60 right now. Oil and Gas are going to become less attractive to investors because of this. Solar and wind are already dirt cheap, tariffs aren't really going to change that THAT much. They'll still be cheaper and a better investment than Oil/Coal/Gas.

b450 2y ago

I clicked through to this article about the chairman of the EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee: https://revealnews.org/article/trumps-air-pollution-adviser-clean-air-saves-no-lives/ https://revealnews.org/article/trumps-air-pollution-adviser-... Making a career out of making the case for air pollution. I hope the money is worth it. This guy should have to live and raise his kids next to a coal plant.

xtiansimon 2y ago

> “The EPA told businesses last month that they can simply email the agency if they want an exemption from certain pollution regulations…” I’d like to see the FOIA request results listing those businesses.