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This is whining from someone that doesn't want to be responsible for the externality of pollution that these manufacturing facilities generate. The regulations

• RajT88 8mo ago
  We've kicked the can down the road. Stuff used to cost more; now we make everything out of plastic overseas. Once all of those economies are wealthy enough to start caring about the environment (and I'm convinced we'll get there), pollution will have to be dealt with globally. Maybe by then we'll have returned to building products which last (although I'm not holding my breath).
• rob74 8mo ago
  Thanks for confirming my suspicion! When I read phrases like "Battery cells require electrode coating with toxic solvents (NMP), electrolyte handling, and formation cycling. This is exactly why Tesla's Gigafactory went to Reno." I (as someone not very familiar with the subject) thought it's strange that California should regulate what kind of chemicals can be used in an industrial process. Of course, they don't - but they regulate that industry can't release toxic chemicals into the environment. But because Elon thinks it's too expensive to make sure that no NMP gets out of his factory, he goes to his Republican pals in Texas or Nevada who don't worry about pollution...
  • djha-skin 8mo ago
    ...because dumping stuff into the middle of what is already a barren wasteland isn't actually a problem.
    • harimau777 8mo ago
      I'm not aware of many (non-manmade) barren wastelands on Terra. Even the Empty Quarter has wildlife. About the only place I can think of would be something like the Dead Sea.
    • nine_k 8mo ago
      NMP in particular readily biodegrades in aerobic environments, both in water treatment plants and just in water. Bacteria seem to crack it quickly. It's also not volatile. You have to protect yourself while working with it, but it's not comparable to really nasty stuff, like heavy metals.
    • ceejayoz 8mo ago
      The Gigafactory is less than 20 miles from a drinking water reservoir (and recreation area) in one direction, and the city of Reno in the other. ~30 miles to Lake Tahoe. And according to https://www.reno.gov/home/showpublishedimage/4088/635198081788730000 https://www.reno.gov/home/showpublishedimage/4088/6351980817..., it's about two miles from the watershed that feeds it.
      • inigyou 8mo ago
        20 miles is a very long way away
        • bichiliad 8mo ago
          Surely you must know what a watershed is.
    • AshleyGrant 8mo ago
      The desert is not a "barren wasteland." It is a valuable, vibrant ecosystem no different than any other.
      • saalweachter 8mo ago
        The desert is an ocean with its life underground, and the perfect disguise up above.
  • scottyah 8mo ago
    That's certainly one interpretation. Most of the workers there keep doing what they do to protect the environment though, so it's entirely plausible that they are taking precautions to save the environment, but find the method in which the regulations are implemented to be slow or arcane. If it's anything like cybersecurity in the government, the laborious process of filling out irrelevant paperwork is orthogonal to actually accomplishing the initial goals.
    • 0xWTF 8mo ago
      If there's anything I have learned with age it's that regulations have bizarre unintended consequences. The incentives are too numerous and too precariously balanced to muck with without tipping someone's seesaw right into a volcano.
    • snypher 8mo ago
      >laborious process of filling out irrelevant paperwork is orthogonal to actually accomplishing the initial goals. Well yes, it's designed so that a handful of teenagers can't just clone the IRS database, for example.
• terminalshort 8mo ago
  China has reduced its pollution massively since the 90s while aggressively expanding its industrial output. And they have done it without excessive bureaucracy and delays in construction. In the US environmental laws are not about the environment at all. They are there to enrich lawyers who profit from multi year permitting processes and lawsuits.
  • danans 8mo ago
    > China has reduced its pollution massively since the 90s while aggressively expanding its industrial output. And they have done it without excessive bureaucracy China's system is authoritarian state-capitalism. It is precisely the bureaucracy that steered it's industries toward this outcome.
    • dmix 8mo ago
      It helps you can buy an electric car in China for 1/4th the price as California. They also massively invested in every sort of energy (not just solar) where it's cheap and affordable to develop industry. Everyone obsesses about labour costs but almost everything is easier and cheaper to build in China because they allow stuff to be built there. Including the workers far lower housing, utilities, fuel, and food prices which lower the cost of living.
      • inigyou 8mo ago
        That's because the bureaucracy there is making stuff get built instead of making stuff not get built, and it planned all the externalities too.
  • mistrial9 8mo ago
    > In the US environmental laws are not about the environment at all. that is literally nonsense .. lazy nonsense, ill-willed nonsense.. Ignorant nonsense. literally four seconds to search " history of us environmental law"
  • gamblor956 8mo ago
• WhatsTheBigIdea 8mo ago
  The regulatory bureaucracy is a real hurdle. Even if you want to comply with the regulations, navigating the regulatory bureaucracy is a killer. Super slow, super expensive, quite opaque, somewhat arbitrary, and highly punitive. Even if the bureaucracy didn't exist and everyone voluntarily followed the regulations, you could not run a globally cost competitive business without some sort of subsidy when competing with places where rampant pollution is allowed. It's a real problem without an obvious long term solution that I am aware of.
  • SiempreViernes 8mo ago
    Yeah, everyone wants faster bureaucracy until they see the cost estimate for proper staffing, then just pretending there wasn't any harm to regulate in the first place becomes the preferred option.
    • WhatsTheBigIdea 8mo ago
      Agreed that staffing the bureaucracy with good people costs a lot. There is a large opportunity to simplify and rationalize the regulations. This would dramatically reduce the cost of both bureaucracy and compliance. In addition to massively reduced cost, it would enable people in CA to do more cool stuff faster! But simplification, rationalization, and acceleration is not in the interest of the bureaucracy or the incumbents... so we are very unlikely to see change until there is an existential crisis.
    • nickff 8mo ago
      Every bureaucracy I've ever experienced is constantly complaining about being under-staffed, but when they get more funding, the service level rarely improves. It seems like complaining about 'over-work' is just an easy excuse for doing a bad job, which makes sense given how many friends I have in government who are constantly complaining about their lazy and inept colleagues.
  • eldavido 8mo ago
    Yeah I think there are two problems First: we may have gone too far toward anti-pollution. China has more naval vessels than the US. Everything changes when peace isn't a foregone conclusion, as it has been for the past 30? 50? years. Second: it's not the regulations per se, but the difficulty of dealing with the bureaucracy, particularly (a) long delays and (b) uncertainty. I run an electrical contractor, so this is not the least bit theoretical to me. The hassle of dealing with local government and PG&E for what should be routine things adds tremendous cost to doing business. Recent concrete example: it cost over $1,000 and two months to process a minor change to an electrical permit set, in Alameda (City). The actual change was moving some panels outside, a small revision to a plan that had already been checked and permitted. This required $1,400 in engineering fees, plus a ~$200 application fee to the City, and then the actual plan check and review charge of $650-700. It was probably one hour of actual work. The worst part was that Alameda outsources its plan check to a third party and I'm pretty sure the plans sat for two weeks on someone's desk at the City, before I asked for status, and then, an hour later, by "complete coincidence", it was sent to the outsourced plan checker. If we could put a precise price on pollution, it would be a different story. It's a collateral damage of all the (even well-intentioned, good) regulation that drives business away.
• archagon 8mo ago
  And starts out with a Musk quote, to boot. (Assuming it's not made up wholesale; could not verify.) We need to push these people out of California.
  • Dig1t 8mo ago
    By “these people” do you mean the people who actually make things? These banned industrial processes sum to making almost every physical object. The net effect is that it’s nearly illegal to make anything physical. Do you think that the state or country will do well in the long term if it’s basically illegal to actually make things? Also funny that you Musk derangement people will never actually engage with the content of the quote’s message, preferring to dismiss it based on your political disagreement with the person who said it.
    • archagon 8mo ago
      What’s funny is how much the chuds try to frame revulsion at white supremacy as “political disagreement” and “derangement.” As I was raised, this is actually just deadass “normal.” I see no reason to engage in any way with the mental flatulations of this virulently racist Epstein fanboy. The quicker his empire can be dismantled and the sooner he gets utterly shunned from polite society, the better off we’ll all be. To a lesser degree, the same goes for his eager and willing co-conspirators. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/12/elon-musk-posts-january-white-supremacists https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/12/elon-musk... As for California, as a resident, I’ll take environment over industry, thanks. Half my home neighborhood is already a Superfund site. Go fuck up Texas if you like.
      • Dig1t 8mo ago
        Again, very little engagement on ideas, but full paragraphs of derangement about "white supremacy" and "racism". Nobody cares man, you spent the last 10 years calling everything you disagreed with racism and now those words mean nothing. >Go fuck up Texas if you like. Indeed, Texas is taking a net inflow of builders and entrepreneurs, California has a net outflow. The state is booming and the future is being built in Texas. The most advanced rocket in the world, something that puts governments to shame, is being built there. Massive semiconductor manufacturing plants, electric cars, financial companies, tons of new housing (look at Austin, 25% price reduction because of new supply in recent years), all happening there. But I really do think that your train of thought is sort of misanthropic. Anti-progress, anti-science, and just generally being "anti-building" does not play out well in the long term. I supposed it's a lesson that generations have to re-learn.
• djha-skin 8mo ago
  > What would fix that is enforcing the regulations nation wide, then applying tariffs on imported products that don't enforce the same regulations. This is the biggest lie we are told, and the most heinous. The only thing that will fix it is when people like you (and me!) stop purchasing things which were made in those regulatory environments. If you continue to purchase them under the premise that "I have no choice, I have to participate in this fallen world," so does the state of California. Banning these activities when there are alternative regulatory environments just pushes the problem to someone else. A great example of this is the Obama-era fuel efficiency laws. No one actually wanted a more efficient truck, so to get around the laws, the manufacturers just made larger trucks, which caused more problems than they solved. Outlawing something, then doing nothing to stop demand for that thing, that's just irresponsible.
  • conk 8mo ago
    I want a more efficient truck!
  • harimau777 8mo ago
    I don't think that will work. There's simply no viable path towards that much coordination; especially when late stage capitalism ensures that most people are living too hand to mouth to be able to worry about stuff like the environment.
• pfannkuchen 8mo ago
  The phones might not even be more expensive in the long term, if we’re just in an easier-to-discover local maximum in efficacy x cost x pollution space.