Sunday, November 16, 2008

Fucking EPA

Environmentalist recently won a battle against the Environmental Protection Agency which will mean that CO2 will be included on the list of air pollutants. This is a victory in the fight against climate change and so I do not want to speak too ill of it but I think this victory underlines a problem.
Wouldn't a well functioning environmental watch dog be fighting in the courts on the side of the environmental groups against the corporations? It seems like the EPA is misnamed.
I think that President-Elect Obama could really help the environment by making the EPA as independent of the government as possible creating an organization whose goal is to work through the judiciary to try and force through as many new protocols as possible to increase the amount of power it has and to reduce the amount of pollutants that industry may emit.
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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree "Environmental Protection Agency" is a bit of a misnomer. The way it functions it really should be called "Industral Polution Regulation Agency".

The EPA just makes sure no one is cutting costs by just dumping toxic waste on the side of the road, because if that were legal, someone would be doing it. They are more pro business. They just set a MAXIMUM amount of damage an industry is allowed to get away with. Sadly... that's usually set to be just a tad under what the environment can handle without being completely ruined.

Bear in mind though, most of the world has much less regulations than we do in good ol' U.S.A. Take China for instance. If the EPA were to put too many regulations on business, it would make it even harder for our companies to compete globally. Well, that's the arguement anyway.

16 November 2008 at 17:16
\ said...

I think that you bring up a good point about America having better standards than many countries but do you think that China should have to be as stringent in their policies as the developed world? I think of China as on par with the western world in maybe the 50s? So if their regulations exceed ours at that time perhaps they are doing ok?

16 November 2008 at 23:19
Anonymous said...

No, I think China should be on pr with all other industrial nations. They have the money, the technology and the manpower to equal if not exceed standards of other 1st world nations.

China tries to say that since some parts of their country are nearly 3rd world conditions they should not be held to the same standard, that's a load of hooey! Those regions are not their industrial centers and are not the places producing polution.

They also try to argue that other countries that grew up before them poluted heavy, and during that time built strong infrastructure and wealth. They feel they should be allowed the same "grace period" to build up. Well, our planet can't afford to give China such a luxury. It's not 1808, it's 2008. We have 2008 knowledge and 2008 technology. If China wants to play by the rules of 1808 they should have started industrial development in 1808.

17 November 2008 at 09:55
\ said...

I agree that we do know more now and our planet is in more pain now so China should be doing more. I do however think that 20 years down the line China will be doing more to protect the environment than North America will be doing. China will also have the advantage of foreign reserves and an educated, motivated, work force. Something that the west has not had in a long time. At least the motivated part.

17 November 2008 at 11:19
j-rem said...

I'm going to weigh in on this in a few areas
1) Yes, the EPA is a misnomer, but is about par for the course for american bureaucracy. fuck that, its about par for the course for all government bureaucracy. there is an endless is so-called institutions for the protection of (insert cause). what you are complaining about is that bureaucracy and government achieves nothing... or at least rarely what it "set out" to do. half of these were setup in the 60's and 70's to create government jobs. im sure there is a Government Job Protection Agency too - that protects private industry against unions or something..

2) china should be able to do what they want. kyoto protocol and the like are fruitful agreements of miraculous strides to create a better planet - if you're an idiot. they are agreements that are pushed by the west for 2 reasons: 1) political favour (appealing to the masses), and 2), but more importantly, to thwart growth outside of the first world. how could an 'underdeveloped' country knowingly sign an agreement to REDUCE its greenhouse gases. half of these countries don't have a power plant. by agreeing to REDUCE their emissions, or at least keep them level (at best), they are signing poverty perpetuity. the denominator is -0.00001 and the calculation is debt to the IMF/World Bank. it is not practical for all nations to be held equal in terms of pollution.
3) maybe GHG emissinos should be pro-rated to the size of your population. i.e. china is allowed 3.5 times more pollution than the US, and german the same. it seems reasonable. some would argue it should be prorated to GDP... one rationalizes it, the other justifies it.
4) we need more emissions trading, ergo, abatement. the US would never allow it to happen on a more global scale because chinese/indian companies would simply outbid them... you think manufacturing jobs are disappearing now, wait until that goes through.
5) if this science is so sound, why can't they just calculate the X number of tonnes of whatever that we can emit in a given year that the current environment can manage. i.e. the earth, currently, can cycle X amount of CO2 into oxygen in a year, so we need to product no more than X-E (epsilon).. why have i not seen that number? when will this number exist? if that number exists, which is MUST, why dont we just set that as the cap in tonnes, then trade the pollution around. take the profits from the initial trade, and all SPO (secondary public offerings) and put it into an international sovereign wealth fun for planting trees/foliage. the more money we make, the more we can plant, the more we can pollute. thats what i call pragmatic, sustaintable "environmentalism". we need as much protection from the environment as it does from us.

im spent.

19 November 2008 at 11:02
\ said...

I'll start with the easiest and go from there.
A sovereign International Fund? What are you? That is the best oxymoron I have read today. If it is international it is not sovereign by definition and vice verse.
When the amount we emit is coupled with the amount we reduce the scrubbing capacity of the Earth constantly there is no way to create that number. We are bleaching our oceans (remember plankton is as important as the rain forest when it comes to removing CO2) and cutting down/burning forest area constantly that X-e level is dropping by the second.
Kyoto was a lovely idea. Its like when you go to Florida or the Caribbean on vacation and you renewed and think of all things you are going to change in your life but when you get back home the lawn needs mowed and the wife is yelling at you so your resolution fades in a day. Only for governments the lawn is I don't know servicing your debt and the wife is industry lobbyists I guess? Whatever. Maybe you can see where I am going with this?
I think the idea of a carbon tax whose revenues are split - 80% reimbursed on a per capita basis and 20% is used to fund research or even government works in the green energy sector. Every person and corporation gets an even cut of the pie based on their demographic.
ex: Steel companies are weighted against other still companies and get some portion of their revenue to increase incentives on cutting back emissions.
Cap and trade is better but only if there are no free handouts. ie: all abatement credits are auctioned and the number, tied to growth, decreases in real terms each year.
To make that system easier you can take all air pollutants in CO2 equivalents so you only need one type of credit.

19 November 2008 at 22:13
Anonymous said...

Yeah, the EPA isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing. But the real problem is that it's controlled ultimately by whoever is the President, which until January is Bush. It's not independent, so it can't function effectively to enforce the laws as written by Congress. Sure, the EPA is pro-business. The FDA is pro big drug companies. The same thing can be said of any of the agencies that are supposed to protect us.

What can be done? Unless these agencies are made independent of political pressure, not much. About all that can be done as things are now is to try to force them through the courts to enforce the laws.

Will things get better now that Obama will become President? Maybe, but don't hold your breath. I am disappointed that he is holding over some of Bush's appointees. Even if things do improve while he is President, what happens afterwards? We could easily get someone else like Bush again and go back to where we are now. The only thing that can be done to improve things long term is to change these agencies to be independent of political pressure.

6 December 2008 at 09:41
Anonymous said...

ok. so I've seen a couple patterns emerge here.

1) EPA tied to the government = problem. I agree- but not because it's controlled by the president. Anyone who thinks that the American government, or it's policies, is controlled by the president has their head firmly planted in the sand. The president is simply the person who gets the blame for when things go wrong. Think tanks, lobbyists, congress, judges who legislate, etc. are the ones who actually call the shots through various means. The EPA, FDA, and other such entities are prone to the "revolving door" phenomena that occurs all the time in Washington. That is, a person who was a civil servant will end that job and go work for a business affiliated with that entity, and vice versa. For example, in order to get a drug passed by the FDA, an employee of Merck, GSK, etc. will resign the drug company and go work for the FDA, then pass the drug. Same holds true for the EPA, and just about every other gov't. agency. Welcome to politics. It ain't right... it just is.

2) About the only thing certain that people have figured out about the climate/weather is that it changes. There is no way that people can figure out just how much of one thing the earth can take before cratering. The reason is that the earth is incredibly dynamic in its systems. It has more variables that affect the weather (let alone climate) than can be fathomed. There is no way that we can be certain about what the climate will do. If there were, we'd accurately predict weather on a daily basis.

3) Which brings up another point. I advocate *responsible* use of the planet (i.e. not being wasteful, etc.), but this "climate change" movement is carried to the extreme quite a bit. Climates do, and will, change. That's how this planet was built. It's silly of us to think that we, as one force on this planet, will single-handedly change climate change. We have no idea what this planet is capable of, nor half the variables we're monkeying with. Our jumping in and "correcting" things will likely wind up being an overcorrection... which is much worse. In short, are we, the ones who "screwed it up" in the first place, going to be the ones to fix it? We don't have the foggiest idea how to... and we have a tendency to screw things up when we meddle in the ecosystems of the earth. I think it's best if we simply handled our resources a bit more responsibly and let the earth naturally take care of the messes we have made.

6 December 2008 at 10:26

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