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Almost every environmental regulation has come after it was already shown that there was some harm that needed to be mitigated. The worst environmental crisis

Almost every environmental regulation has come after it was already shown that there was some harm that needed to be mitigated. The worst environmental crisis in human history is going largely unchecked. I find it hard to take seriously any argument that environmental regulation has gone too far as opposed to not nearly far enough. If there's a specific regulation that can be shown to be doing more harm than good I'm cool with revisiting anything, but the common sense wisdom around environmental regulation has been corrupted by corporate public relations campaigns.

davidw 8mo ago
There's certainly some "environmentalism" out there that's using the banner of the environment for other ends. Here's one example: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-03-02/california-uc-berkeley-ceqa-housing-environment https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-03-02/california-... I mostly agree with you, but it is worth paying attention to the details.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- bevr1337 8mo ago
  This article doesn't speak to me. What I read is, "Won't someone think of the poor UC system?" But the UC system is _massive_ > But Casa Joaquin’s neighboring, overwhelmingly white homeowners could have used CEQA to demand costly studies and multiple hearings before Berkeley officials. Important to note that white people are well-represented at UC Berkley too. https://opa.berkeley.edu/campus-data/uc-berkeley-quick-facts https://opa.berkeley.edu/campus-data/uc-berkeley-quick-facts > More recently, a series of court rulings that culminated last year nearly forced Berkeley to withhold admission of thousands of high school seniors... Graduating high-school seniors are also known as incoming freshman or legal adults. > ... because the state’s judges agreed with NIMBY neighborhood groups that population growth is an inherent environmental impact under CEQA. Ok, let's see how big the UC school system is... > The University maintains approximately 6,000 buildings enclosing 137 million gross square feet on approximately 30,000 acres across its ten campuses, five medical centers, nine agricultural research and extension centers, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2017/chapters/chapter-13.html https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2017/chapt... I'm not seeing evidence that protestors were primarily NIMBYs and pesky white homeowners. I can find several articles citing _student_ protests. > “It’s students who set up People’s Park in the first place, so it’s our place to defend it,” said Athena Davis, a first-year student at UC Berkeley who spoke at the rally. “It’s up to students to reject the idea that our housing needs to come at the price of destroying green space and homes for the marginalized.” https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/01/30/protesters-tear-down-fences-at-berkeley-rally-to-save-peoples-park https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/01/30/protesters-tear-down...
  - davidw 8mo ago
    They're talking about using environmental rules to block homes for people to live in, inside cities. Using land efficiently in walkable places is one of the most environmentally friendly things we can be doing, and supposed "environmentalists" sought to block it using "environmental" rules! If that's not NIMBYism to you, you have blinders on.
    - bevr1337 8mo ago
      I didn't say there was NO NIMBYs, but that this article suggests NIMBYs were the primary protestors. That doesn't seem truthful. Additionally, the UC system does have a large impact on the environment. I'm sure there are better examples to illustrate your point > homes for people to live in Student housing. Which likely means partially-furnished studios with shared bathrooms and a kitchenette at best. This isn't the useful housing folks are asking for.
      - davidw 8mo ago
        It's pretty useful to the students! That kind of "wait, no, not THAT kind of housing, not HERE" is textbook NIMBYism. There may have been some student protestors, but the money behind the legal challenges were all wealthy local NIMBYs.
    - breakyerself 8mo ago
      I would just say that NIMBYS that weaponize environmental regulation for purposes it wasn't written for aren't environmentalists.
      - bevr1337 8mo ago
        That's a great hypothetical, but it's not supported by the article. There are claims that NIMBYs are doing this or that, but follow the links to the supplementary articles and it's baseless. I only find evidence that students and homeless protested. Those aren't NIMBY homeowners. To me, it seems UC wants to bulldoze a park famous for homeless camps and replace it with student housing. Pro-development is trying to cast the UC expansion in the same light as folks asking for affordable housing. But, UC is not providing useful housing for residents of Berkley.
lacunary 8mo ago
what kind of common sense wisdom are we talking about here, can you give an example? understanding the impact of regulation designed to impact both the environment and the economy, two incredibly complex systems our experts are only beginning to understand, isn't generally a matter of common sense
- breakyerself 8mo ago
  The common sense wisdom I'm referring to is that environmental regulation is in general bad or does more harm than good. That's an opinion I encounter constantly and it's a meme that was manufactured in PR company meeting rooms, right wing think tanks, and neo-classical economists theoretical models of how the world works.
an_account 8mo ago
CEQA in California is very often used to block apartments in existing urban areas. So, instead, California continues to mostly build single family housing sprawl into natural habitats. A clear example of environmental regulation hurting the environment and the climate. And of course the affordability of housing.
- busterarm 8mo ago
  And all of the harsh chemicals that get released when that new construction burns up in wildfires...
- breakyerself 8mo ago
  Yeah I'm not in favor of sprawl. It sounds like it needs to be amended, but do you want to go back to polluted air and water just because a small minority of regulations need to be repealed or amended? Wouldn't it make more sense to just revisit whatever regulations are having unintended consequences?
  - derektank 8mo ago
    >do you want to go back to polluted air and water just because a small minority of regulations need to be repealed or amended? >Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that must be either supported or opposed in totality is a manipulative political maneuver and it should be forcefully rejected.
    - breakyerself 8mo ago
      When I say they're mostly good, but we should fix what's broken and people start hitting me with examples of broken regulation I can only interpret that as an example for why environmental regulation should be opposed by default. So I respond accordingly. I've never said all environmental regulation is good. That would be stupid, but you should have evidence based reasons for wanting to repeal or modify a regulation. Existing regulation was put in place for a reason and those reasons likely still matter. Even if the regulation is falling short of having unintended consequences.
nokcha 8mo ago
I'd argue that environmental regulations that impede building modern nuclear power plants to replace coal power plants are net harmful. Nuclear power safety has advanced a lot since Chernobyl.
- breakyerself 8mo ago
  Chernobyl design was never in use in the US, but nuclear went through a long period of near universal public opposition to its expansion because of the high profile disasters that it caused. Now the cost of solar and storage are dropping at a rate I doubt nuclear is ever going to make a significant comeback. I'm not opposed to it, but I wonder if the economics will ever be favorable even with regulatory reform.
  - ch4s3 8mo ago
    > Chernobyl design was never in use in the US Commercially. Several early test reactors were essentially just graphite moderated piles not unlike Chernobyl, but they were abandoned for a reason.
    - mikkupikku 8mo ago
      Graphite moderated reactors are broadly fine, the problem was with some technical specifics of that specific reactor design, and the operational culture that surrounded it. After Chernobyl, those flaws were corrected and operation of other RBMK reactors has continued to this very day, with no repeats.
      - ch4s3 8mo ago
        That's good additional clarification, I only meant to point out that graphite moderated, water cooled reactors had existed in the US and UK.
      - cyberax 8mo ago
        Graphite reactors are not a good idea because they inherently have, well, graphite. That can burn. The worst possible case for water-moderated reactors is uncontained meltdown. And it's not _terribly_ horrible. You will get contamination with volatiles, mainly cesium. But there's not a lot of it in the reactor, so it'll affect only a small area around the plant. Some fuel might get initially mobilized by steam explosions, but again, only a fraction. The worst case for a graphite reactor is an uncontained core fire. That can burn for weeks and spread a significant part of the fuel as particulates over large territories (Chernobyl). Is it likely? Nope. But there are black swan events: earthquakes, mega-hurricanes, meteorite strikes, Godzilla attacks.
busterarm 8mo ago
How do you explain the bug up its ass that the EPA has about auto racing?
- breakyerself 8mo ago
  Congress should pass the RPM act and exempt race cars from the clean air act. I never said you can't cherry pick individual problems with environmental regulation. I just don't like the general attitude that because you can find something to disagree with that environmental regulation as a general rule is bad. It isn't. There are thousands and thousands of pages of environmental regulations. Obviously people are going to be able to find some things that need to be revisited, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Nothing should be repealed without evidence and in many cases amendments are more prudent than repeals.
- breakyerself 8mo ago
  At the same time I'm sick of people facing no consequences for modifying their diesel pickups to blow black clouds of smoke on their fellow citizens.
- _DeadFred_ 8mo ago
  Bro I can't go out without some diesel pickup rolling coal. If anything auto standards need to be higher because people aren't adult enough to follow the 'not for public roads use' model.
coob 8mo ago
Nah some environmental regulation is batshit. Literally, in the UK you can’t build if there’s a protected bat species in the area.
- NicuCalcea 8mo ago
  Why do you think that is batshit?
  - aaronblohowiak 8mo ago
    Guano
- __alexs 8mo ago
  This is not true, there is just a specific protocol you have follow to do the building work. Yes it increases costs, but it doesn't explicitly prevent them.
loeg 8mo ago
Except, you know, NEPA.
BurningFrog 8mo ago
CEQA is pretty universally considered a disaster. The alternative is not to have no environmental regulation. California could copy the regulations of any of the 49 other states and be much better off.
- pixl97 8mo ago
  >California could copy the regulations of any of the 49 other states and be much better off. Says whom? California has a huge population. California has a massive water shortage problem. California has wide areas vulnerable to wildfires. California has piles of small ecosystems that are fragile and can be easily wiped out. Saying California could copy some states like Iowas regulations makes negative sense.
  - BurningFrog 8mo ago
    The major problems with CEQA are: - the extreme cost and time spent on mandatory Environmental Impact Reports - it allows pretty much anyone to sue projects over just about anything, which can also add many years before projects can start None of this has anything to do with California specific environmental concerns
gwbas1c 8mo ago
> If there's a specific regulation that can be shown to be doing more harm than good In Massachusetts you can't clear shoreline. Specifically, if you buy waterfront property on a pond / lake, you can't clear the shoreline to make a beach in your backyard. You can only use what used to be there before the law was passed. There's even restrictions on building close to shorelines, so if you want to build, you need to find an existing building and renovate. Now, I'm not a wetland expert, so maybe someone will chime in and tell me why every inch of freshwater shoreline must be undisturbed. But I like freshwater swimming and suspect that we can allocate some space for human recreation.
- brailsafe 8mo ago
  > Now, I'm not a wetland expert, so maybe someone will chime in and tell me why every inch of freshwater shoreline must be undisturbed. But I like freshwater swimming and suspect that we can allocate some space for human recreation. Are you prevented from fresh water swimming because you can't fabricate a beach for yourself, even if you own the property next to it? Seems like a strange complaint
  - gwbas1c 8mo ago
    Crawling through brush to get to the water isn't fun. Besides, half the fun of the "beach" is the clearing where you can sit and read a book or play in the sand.
    - brailsafe 8mo ago
      Do you need to own a beach to go to the beach?
      - gwbas1c 8mo ago
        Do you understand the point of owning lakefront property?
        breakyerself 8mo ago
colechristensen 8mo ago
>Almost every environmental regulation has come after it was already shown that there was some harm that needed to be mitigated. Ok, strong example here: the long term efforts to stop forest fires caused build up of fuel that should have burned up in small fires which then instead burned up ecosystems which evolved for small forest fires and instead were destroyed in large ones. That's a well intentioned environmental policy that had terrible effects. Fuel efficiency programs with the goal of reducing emissions with exceptions for work vehicles killed small trucks and meant a ton of people who do approximately 0 work drive around enormous vehicles that were designed big to match the exception criteria. That's another one. Ethanol to replace gasoline is also an enormous negative consequence waste that started as an environmental program. Things don't just work because you want them to and programs aren't automatically right because of what they intend to do. Far too many people argue for things they don't understand at all because of the surface intention of them and treat discussion about them blasphemy. (I chose uncontroversial negative examples because I don't want to get sidetracked into arguments about my examples with zealots)
- breakyerself 8mo ago
  Is forest fire mitigation about protecting the environment or protecting property of people who live in wooded areas?
- tastyfreeze 8mo ago
  Ethanol production was subsidized to consume excess corn that was only produced because it is susidized. I don't know if ethanol fuel requirements started before or after the ethanol subsidies but it all happened around the same time.
LorenPechtel 8mo ago
You are acting as if they are somehow equal. Unfortunately, environmental regulations have three huge problems: 1) They become political. Rules are made (or not made) to appeal to voting blocks rather than by evaluating the science. 2) There is a strong tendency not to destroy that which exists. By any reasonable standard coal filed powerplants should not exist. 3) (Could be considered part of #2) There is a strong tendency to look at risks in isolation rather than in the marketplace. We should not be aiming to make industries as safe as practical, we should be aiming to make the outcome as safe as possible. These are very different things! The extreme example of this is electricity. Coal is ~10x as dangerous as oil which is ~10x as dangerous as natural gas which is ~10x as dangerous as nuclear. The risk to society is measured in deaths (or other harm) per terawatt-hour, not by whether any given generator is as safe as it reasonably can be.
stinkbeetle 8mo ago
The unscientific regulation, and in some countries bans or practical stoppages and embargoes on approvals and research, of nuclear power under the guise of saving the environment has been probably the most environmentally destructive initiative ever to come about, and the largest self-imposed contributor to "the worst environmental crisis in human history". The coal industry loves it though. Needless to say, I disagree with your assessment. Every [action by governments and bureaucrats] is motivated by the desire for personal gain or to perpetuate the power of the state or both. Environmental regulation, workers rights, drilling for oil in Alaska, making up stories about WMDs to invade Iraq, domestic spying are all fruit of the same tree. Don't let them fool you, the good of these things is never the primary goal, and in many cases does not even exist. And "environmental regulation" is a big culprit.
- hammock 8mo ago
  > Almost every environmental regulation has come after it was already shown that there was some harm that needed to be mitigated. >> The unscientific regulation, and in some countries bans or practical stoppages and embargoes on approvals and research, of nuclear power Parent comment language isn’t entirely clear, but depending how you interpret it, it can be said that far more harm has been shown, in reality, from nuclear power than from climate change.
  - stinkbeetle 8mo ago
    > Parent comment language isn’t entirely clear, but depending how you interpret it, it can be said that far more harm has been shown, in reality, from nuclear power than from climate change. But it can not be said that far more harm has been shown, in reality, from nuclear power than from burning coal for electricity. It's actually the opposite.
- deaux 8mo ago
  > The unscientific regulation, and in some countries bans or practical stoppages and embargoes on approvals and research, of nuclear power under the guise of saving the environment has been probably the most environmentally destructive initiative ever to come about Six days old, but of course this isn't true. The initiative to block the ascend of electric cars early 20th century to favor fossil interests has been incomparably more destructive.

davidw 8mo ago

There's certainly some "environmentalism" out there that's using the banner of the environment for other ends. Here's one example: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-03-02/california-uc-berkeley-ceqa-housing-environment https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-03-02/california-... I mostly agree with you, but it is worth paying attention to the details.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
bevr1337 8mo ago
This article doesn't speak to me. What I read is, "Won't someone think of the poor UC system?" But the UC system is _massive_ > But Casa Joaquin’s neighboring, overwhelmingly white homeowners could have used CEQA to demand costly studies and multiple hearings before Berkeley officials. Important to note that white people are well-represented at UC Berkley too. https://opa.berkeley.edu/campus-data/uc-berkeley-quick-facts https://opa.berkeley.edu/campus-data/uc-berkeley-quick-facts > More recently, a series of court rulings that culminated last year nearly forced Berkeley to withhold admission of thousands of high school seniors... Graduating high-school seniors are also known as incoming freshman or legal adults. > ... because the state’s judges agreed with NIMBY neighborhood groups that population growth is an inherent environmental impact under CEQA. Ok, let's see how big the UC school system is... > The University maintains approximately 6,000 buildings enclosing 137 million gross square feet on approximately 30,000 acres across its ten campuses, five medical centers, nine agricultural research and extension centers, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2017/chapters/chapter-13.html https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2017/chapt... I'm not seeing evidence that protestors were primarily NIMBYs and pesky white homeowners. I can find several articles citing _student_ protests. > “It’s students who set up People’s Park in the first place, so it’s our place to defend it,” said Athena Davis, a first-year student at UC Berkeley who spoke at the rally. “It’s up to students to reject the idea that our housing needs to come at the price of destroying green space and homes for the marginalized.” https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/01/30/protesters-tear-down-fences-at-berkeley-rally-to-save-peoples-park https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/01/30/protesters-tear-down...
- davidw 8mo ago
  They're talking about using environmental rules to block homes for people to live in, inside cities. Using land efficiently in walkable places is one of the most environmentally friendly things we can be doing, and supposed "environmentalists" sought to block it using "environmental" rules! If that's not NIMBYism to you, you have blinders on.
  - bevr1337 8mo ago
    I didn't say there was NO NIMBYs, but that this article suggests NIMBYs were the primary protestors. That doesn't seem truthful. Additionally, the UC system does have a large impact on the environment. I'm sure there are better examples to illustrate your point > homes for people to live in Student housing. Which likely means partially-furnished studios with shared bathrooms and a kitchenette at best. This isn't the useful housing folks are asking for.
    - davidw 8mo ago
      It's pretty useful to the students! That kind of "wait, no, not THAT kind of housing, not HERE" is textbook NIMBYism. There may have been some student protestors, but the money behind the legal challenges were all wealthy local NIMBYs.
  - breakyerself 8mo ago
    I would just say that NIMBYS that weaponize environmental regulation for purposes it wasn't written for aren't environmentalists.
    - bevr1337 8mo ago
      That's a great hypothetical, but it's not supported by the article. There are claims that NIMBYs are doing this or that, but follow the links to the supplementary articles and it's baseless. I only find evidence that students and homeless protested. Those aren't NIMBY homeowners. To me, it seems UC wants to bulldoze a park famous for homeless camps and replace it with student housing. Pro-development is trying to cast the UC expansion in the same light as folks asking for affordable housing. But, UC is not providing useful housing for residents of Berkley.

lacunary 8mo ago

what kind of common sense wisdom are we talking about here, can you give an example? understanding the impact of regulation designed to impact both the environment and the economy, two incredibly complex systems our experts are only beginning to understand, isn't generally a matter of common sense

breakyerself 8mo ago
The common sense wisdom I'm referring to is that environmental regulation is in general bad or does more harm than good. That's an opinion I encounter constantly and it's a meme that was manufactured in PR company meeting rooms, right wing think tanks, and neo-classical economists theoretical models of how the world works.

an_account 8mo ago

CEQA in California is very often used to block apartments in existing urban areas. So, instead, California continues to mostly build single family housing sprawl into natural habitats. A clear example of environmental regulation hurting the environment and the climate. And of course the affordability of housing.

busterarm 8mo ago
And all of the harsh chemicals that get released when that new construction burns up in wildfires...
breakyerself 8mo ago
Yeah I'm not in favor of sprawl. It sounds like it needs to be amended, but do you want to go back to polluted air and water just because a small minority of regulations need to be repealed or amended? Wouldn't it make more sense to just revisit whatever regulations are having unintended consequences?
- derektank 8mo ago
  >do you want to go back to polluted air and water just because a small minority of regulations need to be repealed or amended? >Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that must be either supported or opposed in totality is a manipulative political maneuver and it should be forcefully rejected.
  - breakyerself 8mo ago
    When I say they're mostly good, but we should fix what's broken and people start hitting me with examples of broken regulation I can only interpret that as an example for why environmental regulation should be opposed by default. So I respond accordingly. I've never said all environmental regulation is good. That would be stupid, but you should have evidence based reasons for wanting to repeal or modify a regulation. Existing regulation was put in place for a reason and those reasons likely still matter. Even if the regulation is falling short of having unintended consequences.

nokcha 8mo ago

I'd argue that environmental regulations that impede building modern nuclear power plants to replace coal power plants are net harmful. Nuclear power safety has advanced a lot since Chernobyl.

breakyerself 8mo ago
Chernobyl design was never in use in the US, but nuclear went through a long period of near universal public opposition to its expansion because of the high profile disasters that it caused. Now the cost of solar and storage are dropping at a rate I doubt nuclear is ever going to make a significant comeback. I'm not opposed to it, but I wonder if the economics will ever be favorable even with regulatory reform.
- ch4s3 8mo ago
  > Chernobyl design was never in use in the US Commercially. Several early test reactors were essentially just graphite moderated piles not unlike Chernobyl, but they were abandoned for a reason.
  - mikkupikku 8mo ago
    Graphite moderated reactors are broadly fine, the problem was with some technical specifics of that specific reactor design, and the operational culture that surrounded it. After Chernobyl, those flaws were corrected and operation of other RBMK reactors has continued to this very day, with no repeats.
    - ch4s3 8mo ago
      That's good additional clarification, I only meant to point out that graphite moderated, water cooled reactors had existed in the US and UK.
    - cyberax 8mo ago
      Graphite reactors are not a good idea because they inherently have, well, graphite. That can burn. The worst possible case for water-moderated reactors is uncontained meltdown. And it's not _terribly_ horrible. You will get contamination with volatiles, mainly cesium. But there's not a lot of it in the reactor, so it'll affect only a small area around the plant. Some fuel might get initially mobilized by steam explosions, but again, only a fraction. The worst case for a graphite reactor is an uncontained core fire. That can burn for weeks and spread a significant part of the fuel as particulates over large territories (Chernobyl). Is it likely? Nope. But there are black swan events: earthquakes, mega-hurricanes, meteorite strikes, Godzilla attacks.

busterarm 8mo ago

How do you explain the bug up its ass that the EPA has about auto racing?

breakyerself 8mo ago
Congress should pass the RPM act and exempt race cars from the clean air act. I never said you can't cherry pick individual problems with environmental regulation. I just don't like the general attitude that because you can find something to disagree with that environmental regulation as a general rule is bad. It isn't. There are thousands and thousands of pages of environmental regulations. Obviously people are going to be able to find some things that need to be revisited, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Nothing should be repealed without evidence and in many cases amendments are more prudent than repeals.
breakyerself 8mo ago
At the same time I'm sick of people facing no consequences for modifying their diesel pickups to blow black clouds of smoke on their fellow citizens.
_DeadFred_ 8mo ago
Bro I can't go out without some diesel pickup rolling coal. If anything auto standards need to be higher because people aren't adult enough to follow the 'not for public roads use' model.

coob 8mo ago

Nah some environmental regulation is batshit. Literally, in the UK you can’t build if there’s a protected bat species in the area.

NicuCalcea 8mo ago
Why do you think that is batshit?
- aaronblohowiak 8mo ago
  Guano
__alexs 8mo ago
This is not true, there is just a specific protocol you have follow to do the building work. Yes it increases costs, but it doesn't explicitly prevent them.

loeg 8mo ago

Except, you know, NEPA.

BurningFrog 8mo ago

CEQA is pretty universally considered a disaster. The alternative is not to have no environmental regulation. California could copy the regulations of any of the 49 other states and be much better off.

pixl97 8mo ago
>California could copy the regulations of any of the 49 other states and be much better off. Says whom? California has a huge population. California has a massive water shortage problem. California has wide areas vulnerable to wildfires. California has piles of small ecosystems that are fragile and can be easily wiped out. Saying California could copy some states like Iowas regulations makes negative sense.
- BurningFrog 8mo ago
  The major problems with CEQA are: - the extreme cost and time spent on mandatory Environmental Impact Reports - it allows pretty much anyone to sue projects over just about anything, which can also add many years before projects can start None of this has anything to do with California specific environmental concerns

gwbas1c 8mo ago

> If there's a specific regulation that can be shown to be doing more harm than good In Massachusetts you can't clear shoreline. Specifically, if you buy waterfront property on a pond / lake, you can't clear the shoreline to make a beach in your backyard. You can only use what used to be there before the law was passed. There's even restrictions on building close to shorelines, so if you want to build, you need to find an existing building and renovate. Now, I'm not a wetland expert, so maybe someone will chime in and tell me why every inch of freshwater shoreline must be undisturbed. But I like freshwater swimming and suspect that we can allocate some space for human recreation.

brailsafe 8mo ago
> Now, I'm not a wetland expert, so maybe someone will chime in and tell me why every inch of freshwater shoreline must be undisturbed. But I like freshwater swimming and suspect that we can allocate some space for human recreation. Are you prevented from fresh water swimming because you can't fabricate a beach for yourself, even if you own the property next to it? Seems like a strange complaint
- gwbas1c 8mo ago
  Crawling through brush to get to the water isn't fun. Besides, half the fun of the "beach" is the clearing where you can sit and read a book or play in the sand.
  - brailsafe 8mo ago
    Do you need to own a beach to go to the beach?
    - gwbas1c 8mo ago
      Do you understand the point of owning lakefront property?
      - breakyerself 8mo ago

colechristensen 8mo ago

>Almost every environmental regulation has come after it was already shown that there was some harm that needed to be mitigated. Ok, strong example here: the long term efforts to stop forest fires caused build up of fuel that should have burned up in small fires which then instead burned up ecosystems which evolved for small forest fires and instead were destroyed in large ones. That's a well intentioned environmental policy that had terrible effects. Fuel efficiency programs with the goal of reducing emissions with exceptions for work vehicles killed small trucks and meant a ton of people who do approximately 0 work drive around enormous vehicles that were designed big to match the exception criteria. That's another one. Ethanol to replace gasoline is also an enormous negative consequence waste that started as an environmental program. Things don't just work because you want them to and programs aren't automatically right because of what they intend to do. Far too many people argue for things they don't understand at all because of the surface intention of them and treat discussion about them blasphemy. (I chose uncontroversial negative examples because I don't want to get sidetracked into arguments about my examples with zealots)

breakyerself 8mo ago
Is forest fire mitigation about protecting the environment or protecting property of people who live in wooded areas?
tastyfreeze 8mo ago
Ethanol production was subsidized to consume excess corn that was only produced because it is susidized. I don't know if ethanol fuel requirements started before or after the ethanol subsidies but it all happened around the same time.

LorenPechtel 8mo ago

You are acting as if they are somehow equal. Unfortunately, environmental regulations have three huge problems: 1) They become political. Rules are made (or not made) to appeal to voting blocks rather than by evaluating the science. 2) There is a strong tendency not to destroy that which exists. By any reasonable standard coal filed powerplants should not exist. 3) (Could be considered part of #2) There is a strong tendency to look at risks in isolation rather than in the marketplace. We should not be aiming to make industries as safe as practical, we should be aiming to make the outcome as safe as possible. These are very different things! The extreme example of this is electricity. Coal is ~10x as dangerous as oil which is ~10x as dangerous as natural gas which is ~10x as dangerous as nuclear. The risk to society is measured in deaths (or other harm) per terawatt-hour, not by whether any given generator is as safe as it reasonably can be.

stinkbeetle 8mo ago

The unscientific regulation, and in some countries bans or practical stoppages and embargoes on approvals and research, of nuclear power under the guise of saving the environment has been probably the most environmentally destructive initiative ever to come about, and the largest self-imposed contributor to "the worst environmental crisis in human history". The coal industry loves it though. Needless to say, I disagree with your assessment. Every [action by governments and bureaucrats] is motivated by the desire for personal gain or to perpetuate the power of the state or both. Environmental regulation, workers rights, drilling for oil in Alaska, making up stories about WMDs to invade Iraq, domestic spying are all fruit of the same tree. Don't let them fool you, the good of these things is never the primary goal, and in many cases does not even exist. And "environmental regulation" is a big culprit.

hammock 8mo ago
> Almost every environmental regulation has come after it was already shown that there was some harm that needed to be mitigated. >> The unscientific regulation, and in some countries bans or practical stoppages and embargoes on approvals and research, of nuclear power Parent comment language isn’t entirely clear, but depending how you interpret it, it can be said that far more harm has been shown, in reality, from nuclear power than from climate change.
- stinkbeetle 8mo ago
  > Parent comment language isn’t entirely clear, but depending how you interpret it, it can be said that far more harm has been shown, in reality, from nuclear power than from climate change. But it can not be said that far more harm has been shown, in reality, from nuclear power than from burning coal for electricity. It's actually the opposite.
deaux 8mo ago
> The unscientific regulation, and in some countries bans or practical stoppages and embargoes on approvals and research, of nuclear power under the guise of saving the environment has been probably the most environmentally destructive initiative ever to come about Six days old, but of course this isn't true. The initiative to block the ascend of electric cars early 20th century to favor fossil interests has been incomparably more destructive.