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EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

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Re: EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

#351

Post by shagie »

tombert wrote: post #64
the__alchemist wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why the left puts up with it. They are too easily distracted by hot-button issues. These are some of the most important issues facing the present and future of our civilization and biosphere. I wish I had a solution, or knew the step to take. I suspect one of the root causes is the narrative, e.g. from news agencies, is being controlled by the propagators of the problem.

Short of some January-6th style insurrection, I'm not entirely sure what "the left" [1] could actually "do" here. I am absolutely not advocating for a January-6th domestic terrorism event, I think that would be a very bad idea, but I also have no idea what we could actively do. It's easy to say "reject the news agencies", and sure that might be a good idea, but that carries the risk of "substituting bullshit with dif…

Normalize factual focused news that covers the topics that right (and center) news doesn't cover. This doesn't need to be biased and shouldn't be denigrating - I would like to believe that the liberal bias of reality is sufficient. Personally, I don't want to listen to angry people of any political bend. Name calling sounds childish.

As to conspiracy theories on the left, they're there. Some of the anti-vax conspiracies came from people who would be considered on the (I'm going to apologize of this is seen as denigrating considering my earlier statement) granola side of the left. There's a fair bit of populist anti-corporate conspiracies and attribution of active malice rather a dispassionate corporate approach to trying to maximize profits.

I would suggest instead considering that it isn't "left vs right" conspiracies (though they have their own spectrum) but rather that there exists a "prone to conspiracies demographic" that is swayed by the left or the right at a given time and those conspiracies that are most in line with the political ideology of the swaying are more likely to be normalized. Politicians agreeing with the conspiracies speeds up its normalization and helps sway the conspiracy minded demographic.

I believe that the pro-science, pro-space, climate change is real, vaccines work of... lets put a range of 2008 to say... 2020 (its not that Biden abandoned it but rather that that congress was not advancing policies and the focus was more on "don't have it break more") significantly alienated the prone to conspiracy demographic from the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has embraced this demographic with the claims of a stolen election, supporting anti-vaccination positions, and openly accepting support of the various anti-{race} groups.

It wouldn't take too much for anti-capitalism or anti-government conspiracies to be normalized and spoken openly by "the left" if that is one's target demographic. It's that left leaning and conspiracy leaning is a slim demographic to try to target. If the conspiracy demographic was decoupled from the current Republican Party, then I would expect to see more left leaning conspiracy theories be espoused openly.

Re: EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

#352

Post by cryptonector »

untrimmed wrote: post #10

So the Environmental Protection Agency is now asking the courts to help them... not protect us?

No. EPA merely concedes that the process used to establish the new rules was not lawful. TFA implies that EPA means to restart the rulemaking process and -presumably- make roughly the same rules as before.

Re: EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

#353

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

dralley wrote: post #251
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kindly stop supporting a nation built on genocide and enslavement. The ethical path to engineering a system that's not intended to kill people is to stop it when it does and dismantle it, evolving the foundational principles used to design it in the first place. And to do all that without sacrificing more lives. Electoral reform is impossible because there's no way to say no to the entire system.

The most frustrating thing about leftists is their focus on tearing down and self-flagellation over actually doing anything meaningful to make the world a better place. There is a whole archetype of person that would rather verbally jerk off to thoughts of defeatism and disgust and criticizing everyone else than do anything useful themselves.

Maybe it's not as dualistic as you portray things. I'm literally designing and building a system for collective liberation and meeting needs to replace systems of oppression.

Why people argue against that is beyond me

Re: EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

#354

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

kbrkbr wrote: post #312
scarface_74 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn’t need “sources of information”. Trump was in office for four years before he was re-elected. It’s copium to think that people aré ignorant when in actuality, they are actively hostile to minorities, non straight, the college educated and non Christians. They would rather feel the fallout of Republican policies as long as it doesn’t help or actively hurts people not like them. In my former home state GA, the…

I think it's rather the choice we are given at this moment in history. But I may be wrong. If you abstract away any other problems and boil it down to environment, health and work protections on the one hand, and restriction of unlimited immigration from countries with very different sets of values no matter the sociological developments that will likely follow you can only choose one. I just tried to summarize what…

You're giving something away by suggesting that a balanced framing is: (1) destruction of our world, health, and lower/middle classes vs. (2) brown people bypassing an insane bureaucracy that prevents us from effectively receiving the tired, poor, huddled masses that we explicitly invite on the country's figurative doormat. You can be against the latter, sure, but suggesting these sides are anything close to equal is a choice.

Do you think we're stupid here?

Re: EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

#355

Post by throw-qqqqq »

Insanity wrote: post #82
estebarb wrote: post #34

I understand that these dumb decisions are mostly profit motivated. But nobody stops to think that the reaction abroad may be: do not eat anything produced at USA?

In EU we by and large don’t eat what America produces though. The same products like Doritos etc will have different ingredients in EU compared to US. US typically gets the cheaper and worse option (less safe). Same for American coke w/ Cane Sugar instead of actual sugar. Americans will regularly consume chemicals that are potentially carcinogenic and banned in EU. EDIT: I meant high fructose corn syrup, not cane sug…

> US typically gets the cheaper and worse option (less safe)

Yes. EU has the precautionary principle: you may market the product after documenting its safety. In the US, it’s often the other way around: you can market the product unless/until someone can show it to be unsafe.

This is often a point of conflict e.g. when negotiating free trade agreements between US and EU, as the US often sees this as a technical barrier to trade and protectionism.

Re: EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

#356

Post by jjani »

hedora wrote: post #283
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kindly stop supporting a nation built on genocide and enslavement. The ethical path to engineering a system that's not intended to kill people is to stop it when it does and dismantle it, evolving the foundational principles used to design it in the first place. And to do all that without sacrificing more lives. Electoral reform is impossible because there's no way to say no to the entire system.

The right managed to succeed with their electoral reforms. Gerrymandering is legal, and the president is now above the law. The left should use the same tactics: Focus on state and local elections then use those positions to fix elections so that the national majority of voters decide who runs the federal government (instead of the current 25-30% of voters). Doing this is completely legal now that the Supreme Court h…

> If the democrats fail to do this, it’s not mere incompetence. It’s probably because their financial backers actually support the changes being made by Trump.

This has been clear for very long. Hence why they're still not doing it, and have for the last 9 years been and still[1] continue to push for Clinton-like candidates rather than whatever candidate has the biggest chance of winning elections. It isn't incompetence, and it hasn't been for ages. They're nearly just as captured. It's true that they're slightly less captured than R overall, but not to an extent that is actually meaningful.

Stating it as an "if" is copium. They have failed to, are failing to, and will continue to fail to do this, and it's intentional. What you're saying is so blindingly obvious that there is no other explanation - no Hanlon's razor for this one, the incompetence angle is not realistic.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/17/politics/2028-presidentia...

Re: EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

#357

Post by crawfordcomeaux »

sunsetSamurai wrote: post #230
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kindly stop supporting a nation built on genocide and enslavement. The ethical path to engineering a system that's not intended to kill people is to stop it when it does and dismantle it, evolving the foundational principles used to design it in the first place. And to do all that without sacrificing more lives. Electoral reform is impossible because there's no way to say no to the entire system.

I live in the USA so I don't have the choice to just leave, at least not now. So I must do what I can to make this country better.

I live in the USA. You can put all your skills to work on designing systems of collective liberation to replace the existing systems of oppression this country was founded on & requires to persist. A collapse is coming, so now is the time to prepare so we have something liberatory to fill the predictable power vacuum with. The wealthy are already doing this.

Re: EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

#358

Post by SantalBlush »

shigawire wrote: post #311
hollerith wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They just don’t believe in a society that cares for the weak and needy. There is some truth to that, but I don't think that explains their position on PFAS because too much PFAS will disable even a strong healthy person. In this particular, it's more that they think that the harm is being exaggerated and that the actual, non-exaggerated degree of harm does not justify putting restrictions on business and commerce.

>that they think that the harm is being exaggerated and that the actual, non-exaggerated degree of harm does not justify putting restrictions on business and commerce I struggle to find a topic where they don't think this. It seems the burden of "proof" is too high. They don't believe in risks to health, the environment, climate, or even functional democracy itself. They think all are fake and profit is more importan…

They will think this right up until these things affect them or their community. Then it will be someone else's fault--someone outside of their tribe--that it happened.

Re: EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

#359

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

NewJazz wrote: post #221
BoredPositron wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a band-aid solution for bad governance.

No, it is not a band aid, it is the gold standard for water filtration. And not all water issues stem from bad governance. Sometimes there is just unwanted minerals in the water for natural reasons.

The gold standard for air filtration might be a military grade gas mask or a compressed oxygen tank, but if everyone had to wear those to breathe the air outside, I'd consider it a band aid solution.

Re: EPA Seeks to Eliminate Critical PFAS Drinking Water Protections

#360

Post by Herring »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #330
yepitwas wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they went in blind, they chose to. Not giving enough of a shit to learn about… in some cases, seemingly anything , doesn’t mean you get to later claim “oh I didn’t want this, how could I have known?” I’ve given a lot of leeway on that stuff over my life, and after this last election, that’s over. Anyone who doesn’t get it at this point has raised stupidity to such an art form that they’ve achieved immorality. That…

One of my “friends” on Facebook who is a devout evangelical Christian that I went to school with between elementary school at a private Christian elementary school, a magnet middle school and she was one of the few white people at my majority black high school and even one of the fewer that didn’t segregate herself and made friends with everyone claimed that Charles Kirk was a good Christian and said I was insensitiv…

It's actually about tribal belonging.

https://bigthink.com/articles/how-tribalism-overrules-reason...

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