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What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

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Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#51

Post by pandler »

If you follow some links, you can find the whole collection (15000 images!):

Documentation project overview: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/542493

Archive contents: https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=*:*&f.parentNaId=54249...

Link to the original PopSci article: https://www.popsci.com/america-before-epa-photos

Traveling outside the US (been moving around for almost 5 years now) has opened my eyes to the value of some of the consumer/environmental/etc protection/safety agencies/laws in the US that I didn't appreciate before.

Some examples not necessarily related to the EPA:

- Auto emissions regulations (or lack thereof)

- Waste disposal (e.g. burning trash on the side of the road or dumping trash in public places)

- Worksite safety (ever see a worker on a commercial build site wearing flip-flops two stories up on a rickety wood scaffold held together by twine, welding with no protective gear?)

- Building codes, both for safety and accessibility

- Marketing spam (depending on location, I'll get a handful of marketing sms a day - I have a newfound appreciation for CAN-SPAM[1])

You can argue that certain regulations go too far or maybe they don't go far enough, and those are important question to ask.

However, and this photo-documentary project underlines this, I've personally come to the conclusion that the importance of environmental regulations can't be understated. It affects the lives of literally everyone, in a "the air I breathe" and "the water I drink" and "the food I eat" and "the space I occupy" kind of way.

[1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/can-spam

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#52

Post by twsted »

hliyan wrote: post #2

When I was younger, I honestly believed in the explanation that left to their own devices, free enterprise will work to protect the environment, as anything that hurts the market will hurt profits. What I didn't take into account was that this argument doesn't work for enterprises run by beings with limited lifespans. All except the most empathic humans will not incur any cost to avoid consequences that are beyond th…

Very well said.

Besides that I think that enterprises in some cases "dilute" ethics of individual beings.

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#53

Post by golergka »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #43
_red wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imbued in your statement is an even more difficult knot to undo. "Tragedy of the Commons" is caused by the very existence of the modern state. Common land = public land. In a truly private system, one in which all land was owned, every parcel of land would have some advocate who cared very deeply about the environmental quality of their land. You producing pollution on your land that negatively affected mine would re…

In this truly private system, who owns the river that runs through the parcel of land? Who owns the fish that swim upstream from the ocean to spawn every year? Who owns the air? What organisation decides who wins when the factory in one parcel of land upstream pumps poison into the water and the air. Who judges exactly how much monetary damages are due from destroying an ecosystem? None of this libertarian fantasy is…

No fantasy that takes an ideology and tries to implement it without any nuance and compromise with reality is feasible, period.

Libertarianism and anti-statism are usually quite more nuanced than their typical strawmen, and many libertarians are OK with small state which would be in charge of law enforcement. However, such small state still has no reason to own any land (except for government buildings) or designate any land as "public".

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#54

Post by iainmerrick »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #27

It's important to tell a balanced story. Parts of America was like this. Most of it was not. Civil suits failed to curb industrial emissions in built-up areas, which then spilled over everywhere else. The EPA was a godsend. I didn't understand the problem until the first time I visited L.A. Wow, what a mess. The air was so thick. It was disgusting. It's amazing the progress we have made. But the EPA, like so many oth…

I think the feedback loop is industry, who will continue to come up with new processes, materials, chemicals etc, which will improve our lives in some way, at some cost to the environment. The EPA can't stand still, it needs to keep pace with the industries it oversees.

You're right of course that industry isn't all bad; we just need the right balance. As long as the EPA's budget isn't expanding out of control, they're probably not simply empire-building.

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#55

Post by orf »

stupidcar wrote: post #45
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #8

I've never really understood why conservatives are so reluctant to look after their environment, after all they get to live in it as well.

As I understand it, the conservative attitude is that environmental concerns are either overplayed, or simply a Trojan horse invented to push anti-business/anti-capitalist policies, and a leftist agenda in general. They believe that many of the most fervent environmental campaigners are not really interested in evolutionary improvements to the current system, but instead want revolutionary change, including the compl…

The planet cannot sustain our current way of life, it's as simple as that.

Moderate changes here and there, while they may make you feel like your doing something, is merely a band aid on a mighty cut.

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#56

Post by golergka »

zaarn wrote: post #46
_red wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>because I would call property rights a legal fiction Nearly every culture that has ever existed has recognized that someone taking something from you by force is crime. Its a normative expectation for nearly 100% of all humans. People like yourself, who don't see a value in others property (ie. think you are free to take it), are generally seen as very dangerous and inconsiderate people.

Property Rights aren't an inherent part of nature just because humans like to be greedy. Property Rights exist, at best, as part of a human narrative that we have some interest in designating a legal owner for a piece of dirt. Without humans, the dirt is not owned. With humans, we say we own the dirt (but there is no actual, objective ownership). >People like yourself, who don't see a value in others property I don't…

> Property Rights aren't an inherent part of nature just because humans like to be greedy.

Property rights are the first level of abstraction above the physical layer of "might is right". "Public" land is usually a higher level of abstraction, because it almost always still limits who is the public: even indigenous people usually mean "public" land as land of our tribe, not their tribe.

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#57

Post by [deleted] »

hliyan wrote: post #2

When I was younger, I honestly believed in the explanation that left to their own devices, free enterprise will work to protect the environment, as anything that hurts the market will hurt profits. What I didn't take into account was that this argument doesn't work for enterprises run by beings with limited lifespans. All except the most empathic humans will not incur any cost to avoid consequences that are beyond th…

[deleted]

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#58

Post by aninhumer »

_red wrote: post #44
netrus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, that doesn't sound very convincing to me. When I fly over Germany, it appears to me that actually almost every land is owned by people that are affected by the environment a lot: Farmers. Furthermore, air polution is one of the biggest environmental concerns right now, and air does not care about land ownership - city people are affected by bad air, but how would their situtation be better without the modern stat…

>because I would call property rights a legal fiction Nearly every culture that has ever existed has recognized that someone taking something from you by force is crime. Its a normative expectation for nearly 100% of all humans. People like yourself, who don't see a value in others property (ie. think you are free to take it), are generally seen as very dangerous and inconsiderate people.

>Nearly every culture that has ever existed has recognized that someone taking something from you by force is crime.

Yes, most cultures recognise some notion of property, few would agree with taking the clothes off someone's back. But the exact nature of these property systems is varied, and the idea that all things must necessarily have an owner, and anyone else using them is "taking them by force", is by no means universal.

Many cultures have some notion of public property, and indeed many of these public property rights were violated historically in order to establish the modern notion of private ownership.

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#59

Post by zaarn »

golergka wrote: post #56
zaarn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property Rights aren't an inherent part of nature just because humans like to be greedy. Property Rights exist, at best, as part of a human narrative that we have some interest in designating a legal owner for a piece of dirt. Without humans, the dirt is not owned. With humans, we say we own the dirt (but there is no actual, objective ownership). >People like yourself, who don't see a value in others property I don't…

> Property Rights aren't an inherent part of nature just because humans like to be greedy. Property rights are the first level of abstraction above the physical layer of "might is right". "Public" land is usually a higher level of abstraction, because it almost always still limits who is the public: even indigenous people usually mean "public" land as land of our tribe, not their tribe.

While I agree, that isn't what I adressed in the argument.

Property rights are still not an inherent part of nature.

If you break down the universe into component parts and sift through it all, you won't find any part that says "Property rights" and rather stuff like "Gravity" or "Particle Weak Interaction" or "Wave-Particle Duality".

Re: What America looked like before the EPA, in photos

#60

Post by jhbadger »

cimmanom wrote: post #5

That's without even showing the Cuyahoga river burning, the oil slicks and dead animals in Newtown Creek, or any superfund sites.

Yeah, I was really expecting either Cuyahoga or the infamous "Valley of the Drums" with leaking barrels of toxic waste

http://bullittcountyhistory.org/bchistory/valleydrum.html

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