Goodbye and fare well to the EPA

I'm concerned about the environment in the sense that your industry can impose costs on me, a complete third party, and I can't recover those costs. Climate change is a good example of this, because the logistics of taking that many people to court is complicated.

In the case of black lung disease, these kinds of problems where the EPA might need to exist are not there. Coal miners, to an extent, understand that there is a risk of developing black lung disease. If it can be shown that a particular coal company was completely negligent in protection of its workers, then they can and ought to be sued in court.

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Yes, the EPA works for me and you. Anyone making a profit is evil. Coal must be shut down and replaced with renewable energy.

 

And again you have individuals with shallow pockets and rising health care costs trying to get money from a multinational who can easily fold into another company and another and another till you get a shell company standing there saying "but it was not OUR fault and we have no money"

Happens all the time here with land regeneration and it happened BIG time with bloody James Hardy and asbestos - we won that court case but the company simply moved overseas and left a shell behind

 

All the clean air and clean water regulations were implemented in the 1970's. We don't need anymore regulations. It's a mystery as to what the 15,000 EPA employees are doing ??

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Powder River coal is much less expensive that nat gas. It is immoral to restrict the use of coal. The PM2.5 regulations are absurd. The EPA claims that PM2.5 results in as many deaths as cancer and that 1 in 5 pregnancies is pre term due to PM 2.5. And yet they cannot name any person so affected. That is absurd.

 

Healthcare is a completely different discussion. Let's stay on this topic for now. I'm deeply divided on the issue of whether individuals should be able to incorporate and not be personally liable. On the one hand, I like this because it means people will take more risks and we need that for a thriving economy. On the other hand, I fear that at times this means people don't get what they're due.

The central point in this is that if you're going to work in a field that provides risk for a disease and you have an otherwise completely equivalent job that doesn't provide that risk, you're going to work for the job which doesn't carry that risk. In order to incentivize people to work for them, the firm which holds the disease risk is going to have to offer something to entice people to work for them. This is an economic concept called compensating differentials. This is why underwater welders earn so much money, because it's one of the riskiest jobs out there.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensating_differential

The implications of this concept ruin a lot of the progressive labor arguments, e.g. worker safety regulations are necessary (which is what this discussion has turned into).

 

Problem with your analysis is that it discounts ecological disasters and the resulting lawsuits. One could say that moving a chemical factory to the
less regulated area around Bhopal, India, was a smart move economically for Union Carbide ... of course, because of those same lax regulations, the company went
broke after a chemical spill. Lots of poor people died that day.

PGE was also pleased they were able to get regulations reduced on chemicals they were using ... until those same lax policies cost them $350 million in lawsuits - of course it was poor people around the chemical site that were negatively impacted.

Regulations also help protect companies from themselves.

Time after time we find that lax environmental regulations lead to exploitation by polluters and it always seems to be the poor people who are most negatively impacted.
They die.

 

Hmm, I've got my own well, the water is sweet, clear and cold. Democrats in Flint Michigan caused the pollution of the drinking water, just as the EPA caused the pollution of the Animus River. Now I'm not angry at the EPA, I've been in favor of restricting incineration of urban waste, recycling, reduction in the use of Mercury, PCB's, Lead, Batteries and the ban on CFC's. I've personally worked with the people of the EPA and Congress to create some of it's legislature to curb these issues. Under Obama the EPA attempted to control the creek in front of my home without Congressional legislation, when even the State refused to do so.
Anyone remember when Al Armendariz spoke about his view on going after oil and gas companies, when he compared the method to Romans when conquering a town. Armendariz stated, "Romans would pick five people at random, crucify them and thus intimidate the rest. The implication was that oil and gas companies or any other entity the EPA would designate as a “polluter” would be chosen at random for punitive action", regardless of evidence of any wrong doing.
Hmm... the methods Armendariz spoke of were also reminiscent of Gestapo techniques used in the 30's and 40's. Then again that became the modus operandi of the EPA through the eight years of the Obama administration.

 

And you are missing the point - no other jobs = people dying because of work

Do you really want this as a future for the American worker?

You think this is an American thing? Think again

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-10/photographing-worlds-most-dangerous-mines-hugh-brown/8083616

 

And there are fewer jobs available when industry is regulated out of existence. You could make this same argument with respect to food, but we see that when there aren't high barriers to entry to food provisions that it doesn't matter that people are "at their mercy" because someone else can come along and provide those necessity provisions a little more cheaply. Similarly, a coal miner could make his coal mine marginally safer to incentivize laborers to work for him.

Just look at the union opposition to Uber, a completely benign service. Regulations kill jobs that you supposedly value so highly. Due to regulations since the 1950s, the American economy is about a third of the size it otherwise would have been. You always have to do a cost-benefit analysis on these regulations, because you might impose much greater costs than what you save. Whatever problem you can point to in a system of deregulation, we have three times as much wealth to pay for it. To me, it seems like people have more choice available under such a system and hence would be less prone to disease, even if some bureaucratic checklist isn't fulfilled.

It's not about what I "want" for the American worker. It's about understanding that each of us has limited information available to us and we don't know the situations of others, and outlawing situations where people are demonstrating that option is preferable to the alternative (because they keep showing up to work) will in all likelihood make them worse off.

For example-- again this is a discussion of labor regulation moreso than the environment but one I'm happy to have-- OXFAM did a study when they outlawed child labor in Bangladesh. Do you like child labor? No. Do I like child labor, is that what I "want for the future of children"? Of course not. But what they found is that when they outlawed child labor in Bangladesh, the children either starved or went into prostitution. This is because the country was poor and the children needed to work to sustain the family. Once developing countries reach a household income of around $10,000/yr, it's found that child labor disappears. That's because the family is wealthy enough to not have to send their children to work and instead can send them to school. But outlawing it because it offends us in our comfortable lives in the West, even though it touches the feels, didn't make those people better off. Again, we see the theme of intentions versus results.

A similar analogy can be made for sweatshops-- they're not fantastic working conditions, but they're preferable to the alternative for those people, and sweatshops are a major stepping stone for a developing economy to become a developed economy.

In short, coal miners are taking into account the possibility of black lung disease when they sign up for the job. I don't want people to get black lung disease and neither do you, but these coal miners are demonstrating that that risk is preferable to whatever alternative option they had available. The best thing we can do for the coal miners is to lower barriers to provide services so more jobs are available and the workers have more choices.

Because that's what ultimately makes people better off is more choices, not outlawing the choices they are clearly and presently making today.

 

Again you are assuming that they have a choice - many don't. They cannot afford to move so to support the family they take risks

 

Republicans have said for years that EPA regulations inhibit economic growth and cost jobs. I think that adhering to clean energy guidelines actually creates jobs in the new clean energy industries.

In any case, over and above the economic arguments is an overarching consideration:

If we don't take care of the earth...if we pollute the earth's environment....it's comparable to using your living room for bowel movements and urination....eventually it becomes unliveable and nothing else matters.

Here's another consideration...if we continue to ignore the looming spectre of global warming, millions of people will experience water and food shortages due to famines and climatological upheavals. Leaving aside the moral aspect of millions of deaths from starvation, hungry people are desperate people. And desperate people will go to war.

 

How does outlawing their job help the situation of the coal miner? Let's just assume you're right and say that this is the only job available. You want that job to be outlawed.

They could go on the government dole, but of course, this was an option before they decided to take the job in the first place.

No matter what the situation is, you never make people better off by removing choices from them.

 

We need regulation against persistent herbicide use. Or better yet, make persistent herbicides illegal. To shut down the EPA is dangerous and very irresponsible. There are regulations that need to be reconsidered but the agency serves an important function. How dumb can people be?

 

Look at it this way; when those rich people die the government takes half of what they own.

 

As much as I want to believe that, that hasn't been the case during the Obama tenure. Too many federal dollars when to subsidizing green energy with the Green Guarantee Loan Program and companies which produced it. Either those companies went bankrupt or their goods and services never took off.

In any case, over and above the economic arguments is an overarching consideration:

Most of us care about the earth; I believe in climate change. I have yet to see any solutions to our problems that don't require us to live with a 19th century standard of living.

 

Who owned those areas? That matters the most when it comes to natural disasters.

Poor nations lack the resources to clean up the messes that they create. Wealth creates a better enviroment; on average.

Corporations are recieve billions in lawsuits every year. There is nothing that ties them into lax regulation.

 

You wrote this in response to

Kode,
Do you recognize that what Hedgology wrote does not run counter to your description of the EPA? Regardless of what Hedgology may or may not feel about the EPA, the statement is an accurate and impartial description of the situation.

Absolutely the EPA does the things you say (with varying degrees of success), and undeniably some of the regulations used to accomplish these things actually do "inhibit economic growth" and impose costs on everyone, businesses included.

Nobody denies that it is more expensive to process, package, and safely dispose of chemical byproducts of manufacturing processes, for example, than it would be to just dump the byproducts into a nearby stream. Hedgology is correct; the EPA's disposal and water quality regulations do impose costs on businesses and individuals, including small businesses and low income individuals. Given the additional required capital to establish regulation-compliant industrial processes, it is undeniable that many EPA regulations do indeed inhibit economic growth.

Judging by the pro-business, pro-employment attitudes and the apparent priorities of the current administration, and judging by the Scott Pruitt's record, the new head of the EPA will be "critical of the EPA" and of its regulations and processes, just as Hedgology wrote.

Many people, (possibly a majority) both for and against Pruitt's appointment, hold this view, precisely because they are informed.

 

The arguments against the EPA are generally not arguments against regulatory protection of the environment, nor are they against the establishment of standards for the health and safety of all.

There already is a lot of environmental regulation at the state, and even at the local level. Most of the anti-EPA people I know and have heard speak on the subject do not object to regulation, but rather to Federal involvement, often because of the added expense of redundancy and contradiction with state laws and local needs.

Consider:
Different states have different types of ecosystems, different environmental issues, and different regulatory needs. Federal regulations apply to all states, but are often in response to a need that only applies to particular states. The unintended consequences of applying a law over-broadly can include creating hardship for local economies or ecosystems without conferring any environmental protection benefit.

I have lived in 3 of the four corners of the US, and in the southern Great Plains. I have seen that these areas have radically different climates, cultures, ecosystems, and economies. I can vouch for the fact that they also have completely different regulatory needs. It makes no sense for the same group of people to establish and apply the same environmental protection regulations to South Carolina swamp as for Washington mountain streams, California desert, or Texas high plains.

Regional differences support the States' Rights argument against the EPA as a Federal entity, not so states can be less regulated, but so they can be better regulated.

Also, the Federal government's employment practices discourage excellence and effectiveness. Unfortunately, Federal Civil Service jobs actually are tickets to eternal employment, regardless of indifference or incompetence. That alone makes an argument for shifting EPA responsibilities to the states, where at least some states can institute higher employment and performance standards.

 

Well it's pretty obvious for the left that no regulation should be challenged. That is unless Trump makes it.

 

It is an understatement to say, "the bloated, incompetent bureaucracy is completely dysfunctional."

As someone who has worked with Federal Government agencies, I can vouch for the fact that the reason the Federal Government is so expensive, inefficient, and ineffective is that the bureaucracy is bloated with hundreds of thousands of incompetent and useless people who are protected by federal service employment regulations. The Federal civilian workforce is 1.4 million in 2017.(http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/9/federal-workers-hit-record-number-but-growth-slows/)

Many of those workers are completely unnecessary or totally useless.

Remember the sequester back in 2014? Many federal agencies furloughed employees for one day per week. That was a 20% reduction in manpower, but there was still plenty of time to get everything done.

It looks to me like 25% of Federal Government employees do 75% of the work. There are some very bright and motivated folks who keep it all from falling apart, and I am grateful for their service. However, there are a lot of people who use government jobs as welfare for the middle class, and they just sit in their cubicles and suck off the government teat.

It is actually possible to "work" for 30 years in the US civil service and collect a generous pension despite failing to meet even nominal standards of work quality, personal competence, or responsibility. I am not saying that all bureaucrats are useless failures who do nothing but hold chairs down, but there is a higher percentage of them than I would have ever thought possible.

This is one of the reasons so many agencies hire contractors for so much of the work. The contractor, unlike a government employee, is actually required, by the terms of the Task Order to complete defined tasks and meet described standards. The contractor can be fired for failing to meet the standards, so they do higher quality work.

It will be interesting to see what Trump does when he realizes how hard it is to fire incompetent and lazy "workers" from government jobs, and replace them with competent people who have real expertise, work ethics and a sense of purpose.

 

If you believe climate change is anthropogenic, then the obvious solution is to reduce the human population.

To do that in a way that does not make ecological matters worse by destroying economies, loss of clean technologies, etc., the population must be trimmed from both ends.

That means a limit of one child per person/couple, no post-natal care for premature births (e.g., no incubators), no fertility treatments, etc., and radically scaling back the gains in longevity. Mandatory tubal ligation and vasectomies after the first pregnancy would be required to keep people from cheating.

We could cut the population by 10-15% within a couple decades if we stopped providing curative medical care for anyone over 60 years old, and if we allowed the infant mortality rate (by age 5) to return to the natural 30-50%.

None of that would require returning to a 19th century standard of living.

It would, however, be sad and ugly to the same degree it is effective.

Face it, if someone insists that anthropogenic climate change is a worldwide emergency, but they have more than one kid, support vaccinations, doctors without borders, and disaster/famine relief, then that person is either a liar or mentally deficient.

 

and yet the upper 1% is richer than at anytime in history. you arent rational.

 

42 years after its Founder was impeached. The two things Democrats inherited from Nixon: The propensity to target political enemies and the EPA. I bet he was a Democrat in disguise.

 

Now that's just stupid.
When your kids get cancer because big business found it most cost effective to dump their toxic waste in YOUR neighborhood, don't go crying to anyone about it. There won't be any government agencies to help you and the cost of the medical care for your kids will be way beyond your ability to afford. So kiss 'em on the cheek and tell them it will all be OK, while you watch them slowly and painfully die from the poisons YOUR choice for president unleashed on them.
Sounds good, right?

 

The EPA is not necessary to deal with that. The states are perfectly capable of taking care of their own particular situations.

The EPA did nothing about the water in Flint MI.

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So are the 99%.

 

Not sure if you understand the difference between "economic growth (a measurement of production and an increase in goods and services)" and wealth; an accumulation of income.

Not sure it's worth my time to explain it to you…