6 ms·

which means nothing because no one believes there are legal consequences if they don't and there are a lot of ways to doge it even if there where a reliable g

which means nothing because no one believes there are legal consequences if they don't and there are a lot of ways to doge it even if there where a reliable government in place like especially if they do what they have been doing recently (run their own generator, build their own power planes) a lot of this cost is implicit and as such very dogeable. E.g. higher cost for gas power planes for other due to major increase of demand, higher medical cost due to more air pollution, higher fuel prices, etc. etc. (not even speaking about anything climate change).

cucumber3732842 8mo ago
>like especially if they do what they have been doing recently (run their own generator, build their own power planes) a lot of this cost is implicit and as such very dodgeable. E.g. higher cost for gas power planes for other due to major increase of demand, higher medical cost due to more air pollution, higher fuel prices, etc. etc. (not even speaking about anything climate change). And it's not just data centers, it's all sorts of industry. My local gravel and concrete plants run their "big stuff" off generators because the cost of the utility drop for their amperage doesn't make sense. And nobody will connect the dots between these choices and the requirements we've saddled utilities with. They're spinning up generator not because it's cheaper per watt, but because they're not operating on the 40yr timeline you need to be in order for the red tape you have to go through to put in permanent infrastructure to pencil out. I'm an abutter for a utility project and I've gone to the meetings for and it's an absolute massive boondoggle. My energy bill is going to reflect god knows how many hundreds of billable hours it takes for these hired lawyers and engineers to prove to the system that they're not gonna fuck over any endangered frogs by widening the cut to meet some industry standard that changed over the past N year and dumping culverts and fill in some places where streams criss cross it. Literally nobody involved cares. The abutters don't care. The town wants it to go forward because it's all trivial and it's not like it won't be their ass if they block an upgrade to industry standards and something happens. The system is just going through the motions. The city engineer grills them about petty bullshit because it's literally his job. They know he will and they have the answers but he makes a show out of the subjective things. Ditto for the conservation commissioner. It's like the Israel missiles meme. One side is my tax dollars and the other side is my energy bill. We're all doing this because some slimy politicians wanted to pander to some shortsighted big picture ignoring environmentalists 50yr ago and beurocacy has perpetuated and grown itself since. No public interest is served by this. And the cherry on top is that at the margin, we get shit like generators that don't need to exist because the cost of the alternative is driven up to the point the fuel inefficient (and also dirty) solution makes sense.
- alphawhisky 8mo ago
  I promise you, the City Engineer is aware of the bullshit. You catch a whiff, but they live in the stink. It's been clear for a while that there's conflicting interests and the only real way to fix it is to change incentives. However, if you're insinuating that the Clean Water Act is made by "slimy politicians and big picture ignoring environmentalists" then you're wrong. That's about the best common sense environmental reform in the last 100 years aside from removing lead from gas.
  - cucumber3732842 8mo ago
    >However, if you're insinuating that the Clean Water Act is made by "slimy politicians and big picture ignoring environmentalists" then you're wrong. That's about the best common sense environmental reform in the last 100 years aside from removing lead from gas. I'm more than insinuating it. The cause may be noble but the state and local implementations have been perverted by all the minutia and business interests and NIMBYism. I would go so far as to say that (state and local implementation of requirements within) the clean water act is a non-negligible contributor to the decline of manufacturing and agriculture in the northeast and upper midwest. We basically took "thou shalt not dump for that is bad for our surface and ground water" and over 50yr turned it into a blank check for all manner of leeches to make a buck and all manner of NIMBYs to make things unnecessarily expensive. Petty 1.5-acre "I want my lightly forested former field to be a field again" and "business is going great I want my gavel parking lot paved" being stalled by five figure costs and even with those costs incurred it doesn't guarantee compliance. That's a far cry from the "yeah we just dump this stuff in a settling pond, IDK where it goes after that but man that river over there sure is a weird color" type 1960s industry behavior that it was meant to really curb. And the big industrial offenders still get to do what they want, not as bad as before of course, but still bad. Some Megacorp's runoff might turn the fish neon green or their 1k unit condo development might turn the river brown with silt but of course they'll be right there with their lawyers and experts who'll tell you why it's fine even when it's not to anyone with a brain and two eyeballs. The layman can't pay off people like that be on their side and neither can the regulators. (I assume this frequent fact pattern what you refer to by "living in the stink") I think it ought to be revamped at the state and local level into something that's substantially more "results based" rather than the proactive red tape "make the bureaucrats feel like their ass is covered if someone ever complains about what they approved" based system we have now. (And just to be clear for any readers who aren't familiar, the clean water act basically doesn't do much to affect the average person or business at a federal level. The local implementations and all the key definitions, industry standards, etc, are where the rubber really meets the road) Edit: Basically I'm saying that in the past 50yr the interests the CWA was supposed to stymie learned how to pay their way around it, the parties who make a buck doing that have gotten themselves all but written into the compliance process to the detriment of the interests the CWA was supposed to not seriously burden. It needs to be replaced or revised to solve those two big problems.
nine_zeros 8mo ago
[dead]
ilovechaz 8mo ago
[flagged]
- FpUser 8mo ago
  >"commies" Who are those may I ask?
  - malka1986 8mo ago
    The famous communists of hacker news. sigh. If you are in the US, and are not fascist, I urge you to leave. You are in an equivalent of 1933 germany. It is gonna be dangerous to not bend for the great leader.
    - ilovechaz 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
SamuelAdams 8mo ago
Similar to the “carbon neutral by X date” promises, this was common around 2016 or so. Notice how companies have mostly cancelled or redefined those promises several years later, once the issue is out of the limelight. If it is not legally required, it will not be done.
- PunchyHamster 8mo ago
  Also the fucking carbon credits. "Hey, we paid someone that's actually carbon neutral, we're carbon neutral now!"
kanddle 8mo ago
There are definitely social consequences if they don't. So far, if you were to look at it, a lot of Not In My Backyard groups have decided to reject data centers within their area because of sound complaints that were never fixed, environmental complaints that were never taken care of, as well as the fact that the electric bill would likely go up. There's a lot of data centers that are not being built because they're not fixing it. The trend is going to continue. The hate for AI is going to grow. You basically have a lot of people that will vote a lot of people into office to take down all AI progress inside the United States if they don't fix their problems. It'll be cool to shit on big tech as a politician.
onlyrealcuzzo 8mo ago
I shall henceforth do the right thing. Blinded by greed, I have never done it before, but I have seen the light, the bright future that we are all building toward. From this day forth, I shall be righteous. In your name, all good things come. Hallelujah.

cucumber3732842 8mo ago

>like especially if they do what they have been doing recently (run their own generator, build their own power planes) a lot of this cost is implicit and as such very dodgeable. E.g. higher cost for gas power planes for other due to major increase of demand, higher medical cost due to more air pollution, higher fuel prices, etc. etc. (not even speaking about anything climate change). And it's not just data centers, it's all sorts of industry. My local gravel and concrete plants run their "big stuff" off generators because the cost of the utility drop for their amperage doesn't make sense. And nobody will connect the dots between these choices and the requirements we've saddled utilities with. They're spinning up generator not because it's cheaper per watt, but because they're not operating on the 40yr timeline you need to be in order for the red tape you have to go through to put in permanent infrastructure to pencil out. I'm an abutter for a utility project and I've gone to the meetings for and it's an absolute massive boondoggle. My energy bill is going to reflect god knows how many hundreds of billable hours it takes for these hired lawyers and engineers to prove to the system that they're not gonna fuck over any endangered frogs by widening the cut to meet some industry standard that changed over the past N year and dumping culverts and fill in some places where streams criss cross it. Literally nobody involved cares. The abutters don't care. The town wants it to go forward because it's all trivial and it's not like it won't be their ass if they block an upgrade to industry standards and something happens. The system is just going through the motions. The city engineer grills them about petty bullshit because it's literally his job. They know he will and they have the answers but he makes a show out of the subjective things. Ditto for the conservation commissioner. It's like the Israel missiles meme. One side is my tax dollars and the other side is my energy bill. We're all doing this because some slimy politicians wanted to pander to some shortsighted big picture ignoring environmentalists 50yr ago and beurocacy has perpetuated and grown itself since. No public interest is served by this. And the cherry on top is that at the margin, we get shit like generators that don't need to exist because the cost of the alternative is driven up to the point the fuel inefficient (and also dirty) solution makes sense.

alphawhisky 8mo ago
I promise you, the City Engineer is aware of the bullshit. You catch a whiff, but they live in the stink. It's been clear for a while that there's conflicting interests and the only real way to fix it is to change incentives. However, if you're insinuating that the Clean Water Act is made by "slimy politicians and big picture ignoring environmentalists" then you're wrong. That's about the best common sense environmental reform in the last 100 years aside from removing lead from gas.
- cucumber3732842 8mo ago
  >However, if you're insinuating that the Clean Water Act is made by "slimy politicians and big picture ignoring environmentalists" then you're wrong. That's about the best common sense environmental reform in the last 100 years aside from removing lead from gas. I'm more than insinuating it. The cause may be noble but the state and local implementations have been perverted by all the minutia and business interests and NIMBYism. I would go so far as to say that (state and local implementation of requirements within) the clean water act is a non-negligible contributor to the decline of manufacturing and agriculture in the northeast and upper midwest. We basically took "thou shalt not dump for that is bad for our surface and ground water" and over 50yr turned it into a blank check for all manner of leeches to make a buck and all manner of NIMBYs to make things unnecessarily expensive. Petty 1.5-acre "I want my lightly forested former field to be a field again" and "business is going great I want my gavel parking lot paved" being stalled by five figure costs and even with those costs incurred it doesn't guarantee compliance. That's a far cry from the "yeah we just dump this stuff in a settling pond, IDK where it goes after that but man that river over there sure is a weird color" type 1960s industry behavior that it was meant to really curb. And the big industrial offenders still get to do what they want, not as bad as before of course, but still bad. Some Megacorp's runoff might turn the fish neon green or their 1k unit condo development might turn the river brown with silt but of course they'll be right there with their lawyers and experts who'll tell you why it's fine even when it's not to anyone with a brain and two eyeballs. The layman can't pay off people like that be on their side and neither can the regulators. (I assume this frequent fact pattern what you refer to by "living in the stink") I think it ought to be revamped at the state and local level into something that's substantially more "results based" rather than the proactive red tape "make the bureaucrats feel like their ass is covered if someone ever complains about what they approved" based system we have now. (And just to be clear for any readers who aren't familiar, the clean water act basically doesn't do much to affect the average person or business at a federal level. The local implementations and all the key definitions, industry standards, etc, are where the rubber really meets the road) Edit: Basically I'm saying that in the past 50yr the interests the CWA was supposed to stymie learned how to pay their way around it, the parties who make a buck doing that have gotten themselves all but written into the compliance process to the detriment of the interests the CWA was supposed to not seriously burden. It needs to be replaced or revised to solve those two big problems.

nine_zeros 8mo ago

[dead]

ilovechaz 8mo ago

[flagged]

FpUser 8mo ago
>"commies" Who are those may I ask?
- malka1986 8mo ago
  The famous communists of hacker news. sigh. If you are in the US, and are not fascist, I urge you to leave. You are in an equivalent of 1933 germany. It is gonna be dangerous to not bend for the great leader.
  - ilovechaz 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]

SamuelAdams 8mo ago

Similar to the “carbon neutral by X date” promises, this was common around 2016 or so. Notice how companies have mostly cancelled or redefined those promises several years later, once the issue is out of the limelight. If it is not legally required, it will not be done.

PunchyHamster 8mo ago
Also the fucking carbon credits. "Hey, we paid someone that's actually carbon neutral, we're carbon neutral now!"

kanddle 8mo ago

There are definitely social consequences if they don't. So far, if you were to look at it, a lot of Not In My Backyard groups have decided to reject data centers within their area because of sound complaints that were never fixed, environmental complaints that were never taken care of, as well as the fact that the electric bill would likely go up. There's a lot of data centers that are not being built because they're not fixing it. The trend is going to continue. The hate for AI is going to grow. You basically have a lot of people that will vote a lot of people into office to take down all AI progress inside the United States if they don't fix their problems. It'll be cool to shit on big tech as a politician.

onlyrealcuzzo 8mo ago

I shall henceforth do the right thing. Blinded by greed, I have never done it before, but I have seen the light, the bright future that we are all building toward. From this day forth, I shall be righteous. In your name, all good things come. Hallelujah.