3 ms·
> People who espouse environmental deregulation should go check it out. This is a very interesting comment. Right now in Canada, we have a Conservative majorit
by cryptoz 14y ago
> People who espouse environmental deregulation should go check it out.
This is a very interesting comment. Right now in Canada, we have a Conservative majority government that is absolutely hell-bent on environmental deregulation. Their supporters almost exclusively bring up China as the primary reason why environmental deregulation is so important to them ("if we kept our existing regulations, our economy would tank since China would make so much more money").
I very much doubt seeing the skies in Beijing would change anything, but I wonder. Perhaps a campaign in Canada to show images of what China is like would make a difference; on the other hand, the supporters of the environmental deregulation are not the type of people to care about air quality. They value a "strong economy" and money above absolutely everything else, and think that Canada needs to pollute more and more, as much as it can in fact, in order to be a reasonable country in the future.
- MichaelSalib 14y agoAir pollution control tends to be extremely cost effective. The benefits from reducing childhood asthma and friends tend to more than pay for remediation technology. Also, people are weird. In the last few decades, there was a huge push to reduce American coal burning plants SOx emissions because of acid rain. It was surprising how much people responded to lakes dying.
- chii 14y ago> Air pollution control tends to be extremely cost effective. The benefits from reducing childhood asthma and friends tend to more than pay for remediation technology. that is only true if it is taxpayers who foot the bill for the technology/equipment. If you were a plant operator, you wouldnt want to install expensive air scrubbers to reduce polution, but which won't actually net you any extra profit. The gov't has to create incentive schemes - otherwise, the rational actor will use the path of least resistance to profit, and i suspect that path won't include pollution reduction measures.
- corporalagumbo 14y agoThe cost-benefit ratio changes hugely depending upon the economic development of the country. In a country where individuals are highly-educated and produce a lot of economic value, sure, better health outcomes can be very prudent investments. In a country like China where educational levels are lower, economic value produced by individuals lower, then the numbers are completely different. Lives are unfortunately cheaper there.
- 3pt14159 14y agoThey are not hell bent. That is an exaggeration. If all of their policies were enacted we'd still be much, much more like Canada than China.