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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

#111

Post by bsenftner »

awful wrote: post #90

I lived then and these pictures are very shallow and only show a little of what things were like. They should show things like Fishkill, NY, and how we would dump trash out in the sea, how every area had an impromptu dump down by the river where old mattresses and wash machines ended up and took decades to clean up, where people thought it was OK to dump their auto oil directly onto the ground, massive exposed unline…

I live in Van Nuys, CA, where the aerospace industry used to have manufacturing. Three blocks from me is the "great little bike path" that stretches the length of the valley. Guess what? That bike path is a paved over Superfund site. All of Van Nuys has toxic earth 6" to 10" down. I refuse to eat any fruit or vegetables grown in the area, while everyone around me thinks I'm being paranoid.

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

#112

Post by wallace_f »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #96
zhyder wrote: post #68

It's unfortunate that the EPA is under attack by conservatives who want limited government. If you start from first principles about what the min viable government should do, a big part of its charter would be to prevent major tragedies of the commons. And the environment is a textbook example of something that'd suffer the tragedy of the commons without government oversight. I prefer a bigger government with a bigge…

It really is a shame that is considered a "conservative" view. I think a lot of Libertarians are coming around to have a view similar to your's. That the commons belongs to all of us and polluting and destroying it should be punished. Republican's on the other hand seem to thing liberty only applies to corporations. In fact if you delete the part about wanting big government, I could have almost mistaken you for a Li…

The word has been hijacked. Libertarians want to maximize liberty, which since the Age of Reason has been interpreted in government to mean to restrict as few freedoms as necessary to protect the remainder. One example: don't let people commit murder.

It is perfectly reasonable this kind of reasoning apply to other types of killing or unjust aggression, such as poisoning the environment. So we have the NAP.

But the whole movement is being hijacked by people who either don't care about much else than not wanting to pay taxes, or people who are anarchists (which is decidedly not libertarian).

Perhaps we need to run away and invent a new word. I think you'll find a lot of libertarians agree more often with Greenwald than the Koch bros.

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

#113

Post by titzer »

eadmund wrote: post #89
titzer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Gold_King_Mine_waste_wate... The EPA didn't create this mess. They did screw up handling it, however. What happened was that the EPA accidentally released the waste products from an abandoned mine that had been accumulating in a reservoir for decades all at once . What do you think would have happened without any regulation at all? That shit would already be everywhere.

Well, for one think it'd have been diluted over the course of decades rather than all being released at once. That would have been far better for the environment.

Well, no. The plan with capturing and concentrating the waste is to then treat said waste and dispose of it properly so that it doesn't enter the ecosystem at all. Dispersing it slowly over time is like slow death: it all accumulates eventually, since arsenic, lead, and other toxins don't just evaporate into nothingness.

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

#114

Post by tacomonstrous »

ThomPete wrote: post #87
maxerickson wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lax environmental regulation is picking winners.

Who is talking about lax? You can set rules for what you will allow and then have the market find solutions that can live up to that. Nothing lax or picking winners about that.

Any regulation will necessary create winners and losers. After all, it's purpose is to put limits on spheres of human activity that were presumably occurring. Otherwise, one wouldn't need to regulate them. Coal plants will and should be losers under any reasonable regime.

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

#115

Post by ianai »

da_chicken wrote: post #95
ianai wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adam Smith also said the wealth of nations depended on the economic empowerment of its populace. Policies and regulations meant to better the citizens and not the corporations add the most to the wealth of the nation. Quote:”What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the me…

That second one is a bit... unclear. I think it's the 18th century grammar and its propensity for a dozen clauses. However, it seems to contradict the generally held belief that the poor have a much higher marginal propensity to consume than the rich do.

No, he’s saying exactly that they (the non-rich) have both a higher marginal propensity to consume and thus the wealth of a nation grows much faster with their income growth. But undoubtedly, he nestled it in crazy grammar.

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

#116

Post by greedo »

stordoff wrote: post #18
pavlov wrote: post #3

Americans love their freedom. Which is more important: the freedom of corporations to innovate in extracting natural resources, or the freedom of citizens to pursue happiness without being poisoned by drinking water? The last photo on that page shows Mary Workman holding a glass of well water that the Hanna Coal Company rendered undrinkable. Something to remember for those who pine for the days of "great coal jobs" a…

Not to take away from the broader point (I think the EPA and like organisations are very important), but would Workman not have recourse through other means (e.g. under nuisance)?

Legal recourse for a small homeowner against a large corporation is/was not a likely solution. BigCo has so many lawyers just for this type of contingency, and the homeowner lacks the financial resources to fight. Erin Brockovich was a real person, but her story was made into a movie because it was so rare.

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

#117

Post by ataturk »

zhyder wrote: post #68

It's unfortunate that the EPA is under attack by conservatives who want limited government. If you start from first principles about what the min viable government should do, a big part of its charter would be to prevent major tragedies of the commons. And the environment is a textbook example of something that'd suffer the tragedy of the commons without government oversight. I prefer a bigger government with a bigge…

Your preference for bigger government is so incredibly dangerous that you have no idea what kind of Pandora's Box you are jonesing so hard for.

Strengthening property rights could accomplish most of the same objectives. Why is it that every time we have a problem people run to government which always and forever seeks to expand its powers and levels of control at the cost of the individual? Seems to me if a coal company was washing shit into my well and poisoning my water supply on my property I should have a strong case there. But no, instead of holding that company accountable to the damage done to my property, we have corrupt officials running interference for Joe's Coal Mining, Inc. because they are bought off. The EPA hasn't helped much, either, because they are bought off by lobbyists, too. Stronger property rights does away with EPA lackeys, the lobbyists, the corrupt politicians. But we never do that. Now ask yourself why is that? There could be much simpler legal remedies with TEETH if we wanted to have them, but we don't.

The US needs to rein in its corruption and there is a lot of it. We should do it before we're a hopeless 3rd World nation, and we're heading there fast.

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

#118

Post by 13years »

rayiner wrote: post #101
swebs wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, does the EPA really require 8 billion dollars per year when the protection laws have already been passed and improvements have already been made? In a software project, you allocate $x per month during development, and only $(x/10) for maintenance after it has shipped. Is there a point where the EPA can say "mission accomplished" and downsize to maintenance/enforcement mode, or is this just a typic…

Yes it does, due to the structure of the environmental laws. In a libertarian system, you’d simply ban pollution (I.e. ban the externalizations of environmental costs), and then let the market and the courts hash things out. If a company was found dumping pollutants into the water, people would sue them, and the costs of all of that would get properly priced into the company’s products. But the environmental laws are…

Due to property rights, all pollution was illegal prior to the EPA.

The EPA's purpose is to determine how much pollution is allowed.

During the immediate period prior to the EPA, it wasn't so much it was legal, but the courts began to ignore property rights due to the pressures of what was believed to be common good to let industries thrive.

In some cases property rights are much stricter and can be better enforced, in other cases they are more difficult in areas such as air pollution.

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

#119

Post by ataturk »

filleokus wrote: post #15
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…

I consider myself a really pro market guy, but I can't agree with the statement: > free enterprise will work to protect the environment, as anything that hurts the market will hurt profits I mean, isn't the environment the prime example of a situation where externalities and the tragedy of the commons describe the problems for the free market to solve the problems at hand? Further, free enterprises exist to maximise…

Free market can't but stronger property rights can.

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

#120

Post by moduspol »

Sangermaine wrote: post #99
moduspol wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This straw-mans common conservative views, though. It frames the argument as either "the EPA, as it exists today and has been running" or "no EPA at all." There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of a lot of the EPA's activities and very few of those activities directly prevent what's shown in the photos.

>This straw-mans common conservative views, though. Not at all, when conservatives who do come to power always immediately move to dismantle the EPA, as with the current administration. Not to mention that conservative politicians endlessly rail against the evils of the EPA in terms not even remotely nuanced. I know, I know, "they're not really conservatives!".

But the EPA hasn't been dismantled, and we've had many Republican presidents. Regulations and budgets have been cut, but that's consistent with the belief that the EPA is too big and bureaucratic.

It's just so needlessly pointless to frame things this way. It'd be like posting pictures of people in bread lines in the USSR and saying, "this is what a country looks like with left-wing politicians in charge." I mean, yes, it's true, but it's straw-manning all left-wing politicians as full-blown communists.

Let's try to avoid straw-manning and demonizing political opponents and maybe we'll be able to improve the discourse a little.

> Not to mention that conservative politicians endlessly rail against the evils of the EPA in terms not even remotely nuanced.

Yes, sometimes politicians are a big exaggerated with their rhetoric. That's not unique to conservatives, though.

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