EPA Raises Barriers To Climate-Change Rules (wsj.com) 70
The Environmental Protection Agency is creating higher barriers for regulating the emissions that contribute to climate change, setting new rules that effectively block the federal government from imposing new restrictions on several heavy industries. From a report: The agency, which first introduced a proposal to create the higher bar in August, packaged these new standards in a rule making it issued Tuesday. The rule, to be published in the Federal Register Wednesday, sets new criteria for what is considered a significant contributor of greenhouse-gas emissions. In the rule the agency says that determination is required by law and finds that oil and gas producers, refiners, steelmakers and other heavy industries don't meet the criteria, prohibiting the EPA from regulating their emissions under the Clean Air Act.
Tuesday's action may not have staying power, however. President-elect Joe Biden's team has announced plans to freeze and potentially undo any new regulations, such as this one, that are still pending when it takes power next week. The Biden transition team didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Biden, however, has criticized the Trump administration for rolling back environmental regulations aimed at arresting climate change. President Trump has pushed for ways to check expanding environmental regulations, saying they hurt U.S. businesses like manufacturers and energy producers.
Tuesday's action may not have staying power, however. President-elect Joe Biden's team has announced plans to freeze and potentially undo any new regulations, such as this one, that are still pending when it takes power next week. The Biden transition team didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Biden, however, has criticized the Trump administration for rolling back environmental regulations aimed at arresting climate change. President Trump has pushed for ways to check expanding environmental regulations, saying they hurt U.S. businesses like manufacturers and energy producers.
Are these people satanists? (Score:3, Informative)
Because it is like they intentionally want to create a really big catastrophe with massive loss of life.
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Death Cult (Score:5, Insightful)
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It clearly doesn't hurt being this stupid but it should.
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Death Cult is a more appropriate term. They've gone beyond denying climate change to purposely speeding it up; just like their Super Spreader events go beyond just denying Covid to actively encouraging it.
Indeed. There is something fundamentally broken in these people.
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American elections are like choosing between shooting 1000 chinese or 1000 taiwanese and "not shooting" is not in the options, even if this is the option the crushing majority of people would actually pick.
It's a very bad mindset to assume they agree with everything one of the two horrible parties want to do.
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74 million people who have been trained by Reagan and his progeny to hate the government (but please give us our Social Security and Medicare), that guns somehow give them the right to push people around, that those naughty foreigners are taking the jobs (they won't take and those people are a different color anyway).
They've been trained to disrespect science and scientists because they don't like what they hear. They more or less have circled the wagons and have their spears pointed outward because, y'know
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Indeed. Utter evil.
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Re:Death Cult (Score:5, Insightful)
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The US can't follow suit, because if a Republic President uses one of the only tools he has, tariffs, the propaganda arm of the Democrat party, the corporate media, will claim that he's an idiot hell-bent on destroying America with his xenophobia.
If the President is a Democrat, the corporate leaders are pulling his strings and they want to make things with Chinese labor and sell at American prices.
. . . or, his son has a nice cushy business deal worth billions, and he won't touch it.
In any case, nothing sho
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Re:Death Cult (Score:4, Interesting)
Any manufacturing that isn't done here will be done in China. What part about this don't you understand?
Presumably you also think tariffs are for presidential temper tantrums rather for levelling discrepancies which arise by the attempt to outsource bypassing of manufacturing and labour laws?
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Re: Death Cult (Score:1)
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Re: Are these people satanists? (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of alphabet agencies have entirely too much power delegated to them to the point they feel they can make congressional level rules and change them at whim. Your elected officials have a built in accountability system that gets them voted out if they cross their constituents. There is no such accountability from unelected bureaucrats heading up these too-powerful agencies now. At one time J Edgar Hoover was blackmailing every member of congress and the senate in order to get anything he wanted. This is part of what goes into the making of shadow governments. Roll in a little corporate espionage and blackmail and here you are. Congress should have never ceded their power in the onset.
girding up to fight the previous war (Score:1)
Why do conservatives haet freek markets?!!!
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Because freeks spread gonorrhea?
Leftists should let the bitch-slapping continue, without trying to meddle in the beating those two have coming. Solar is winning for a reason, and it's got nothing to do with your virtue signalling.
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Bullshit. The lettered agencies implement policies passed by the Congress and the president. Most people in those agencies work hard at what they do. Their job is made tougher because they have to put up with people like you who have no idea what they are talking about.
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'cuz if that's what you're saying, I agree.
Re: Are these people satanists? (Score:2)
Laws are much harder to undo than policies. Amendments are even more concrete. Look at the requirements to amend the constitution. If you really want it permanent garner 75% support. I hate executive orders. I hated the DREAM act and it has nothing to do with immigrant kids. Congress passed a law and then it was broke. Instead of fixing it they let the president use exec order to refuse to follow that law. Then when trup used exec order to go back to written law they bitched. It was/is their fucking respons
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There really need to be a bunch of malfeasance prosecutions that are taken seriously by the prosecution. I was thinking of this earlier today in connection with the Post Office, but the EPA is an even more extreme case.
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How do you "buy your way to health" in an environmental catastrophe happening everywhere?
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It is more like they know they are playing Russian roulette and are hoping the gun isn't going to go off before they and their industry buddies finish cashing their chips and go to the Great Toxic Waste Dump in the Sky. They are part of the Me generation: I want what I want now, and screw my and everyone else's kids and grandkids.
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It is more like they know they are playing Russian roulette and are hoping the gun isn't going to go off before they and their industry buddies finish cashing their chips and go to the Great Toxic Waste Dump in the Sky. They are part of the Me generation: I want what I want now, and screw my and everyone else's kids and grandkids.
Probably. Just as evil.
Environmental Pollution Agency (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Environmental Pollution Agency (Score:3)
Lets be real here, the people who end uo paying for shit are ALWAYS the consumer. It doesnt matter to whom you address the fee or penalty, it always gets passed onto the consumer. Feel free to look at all the hidden charges on your phone bill sometime. Every single one of them was enacted to - make the phone companies pay their fair share - . Every single one. We feel better when we think we punish these people, but as long as we continue to have to buy their services, it still comes out of our pockets. I h
Re: Environmental Pollution Agency (Score:5, Insightful)
It still externalizes the cost. Beyond the present consumer. It's the future generation's consumer who will pay the most. Today's consumer saves money at their expense.
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Re: Environmental Pollution Agency (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you tax imports from countries that has not implemented a Co2 tax.
And all of a sudden your more efficient and clean domestic industry will outcompete China.
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Even a broken clock is right twice a day?
One of the few things I agreed with Trump on was the need to rein in China's power and influence, but his approach to the problem was less than ideal.
Re: Environmental Pollution Agency (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Environmental Pollution Agency (Score:1, Offtopic)
Carbon credits dont reduce emissions. They just get people like you to sell your credits so polluters can continue to pollute. While it might be a redistribution of wealth, it doesnt actually lower emissions. And lets be frank. Carbon is far from the worst thing the EPA is mandated to evaluate. Its weird your mind went straight to carbon when its the ground water that is getting contaminated by the chemicals used during the processing stages of a variety of products. There is at leadt a chance of scrubbing
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Why should we give either of those a pass. Can't we try to limit CO2 production as well as making sure that our water isn't contaminated by harmful chemicals? This EPA ruling doesn't help limit either one of those two problems.
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Worse still it's often the general public in some other place that has no legal standing to do anything about it.
This may change as climate change starts to affect the US more and more.
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I can't tell if this is satire. Trying to pretend that the general public and consumers are different people.
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Everybody pays for pollution. The question is if that fact has influence at the time of decision making. Does the cost of polluting influence the consumer at the time of purchase? I agree that the consumer always pays, but bureaucratically, it is much more cost effective to charge a small group of companies rather than hundreds of millions of consumers. It is also more expedient politically. Rightly or wrongly, the electorate finds it much easier to stomach companies being charged for pollution versus the c
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Lets be real here, the people who end u[p] paying for shit are ALWAYS the consumer. It doesn[']t matter to whom you address the fee or penalty, it always gets passed onto the consumer.
The problem with this argument though is that without the regulations it is a race to the bottom for the producer to find the cheapest, dirtiest way to produce a product (since it usually cheapest to produce something when you don't have to internalize the cost of pollution). On the other hand, with proper regulations it actually forces the producer to come up with the cheapest, most efficient method to produce a clean product.
What about competition? (Score:3)
And what about economic growth? How do consumer wages go up? Do you make more than your great, great grad dad (gotta make sure I go back before the 70s with that since odds are good you make less than your dad or granddad, but I digress)?
What I'm saying is, the economy and human civilization is more complicated than "if we try to fix anything prices go up". We need to ge
Re: What about competition? (Score:2)
Youre talking about industries devoid of competition. When was the last time you were able to say fuck your gas company and then call up a different natural gas company to pipe gas to your home? Most utilities operate as a monopoly to their consumers.
Ok fine, let's make a public utility (Score:2)
Also did you really think telling a lefty that giving universally used services over to private businesses is a bad thing was a gotcha?
Re:Environmental Pollution Agency (Score:5, Informative)
It's not ignorance. It's apathy. Trump and his type don't care what happens to the planet so long as they can be rich now. They don't care about their offspring, they don't care about your offspring, they don't care about anything outside of themselves. They are sure that they will be dead before it gets really bad, and they are probably right.
Re:Environmental Pollution Agency (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's why I'll never understand Trump voters, I mean, I understand having a difference of political opinion, that some people may believe abortions are right, some believe they're wrong and that sort of thing.
But what kind of fucking idiot would ever believe it's better to have more polluted air and water? I just can't understand why anyone would cheer on more people dying early with lungs, more kids being born with lung problems, their family getting cancer due to carcinogens in the air and water. It's no
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Re: Environmental Pollution Agency (Score:1)
Re:Environmental Pollution Agency (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a real dick move because the next administration, taking over in a week's time, will seek to undo it. So all this is doing is wasting Biden's time and political capital.
Some people might make a quick buck while it's being reversed but most won't bother because they know that longer term it's not viable to e.g. design a car that uses current emissions targets when they will get tighter relatively soon.
This is absurd now (Score:1)
Does Trump see the American people as the enemy?
It is one (incredibly stupid) thing to believe that climate changes aren't coming. I don't have much respect for those that ignore facts because they're afraid, but at least there is a reason. I can relate to being afraid, I have been so myself many times throughout the years. But to actively try to make things worse for the very people he is supposed to represent?
No one, and I mean no one, could possibly think that increasing emissions from heavy polluters wo
Re:This is absurd now (Score:5, Informative)
Does Trump see the American people as the enemy?
He sees anyone not named Trump (and even some named Trump, like his niece) as a potential enemy. After his treatment of people like Cohen, Barr, and Pence that should be patently obvious.
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Does Trump see the American people as the enemy?
He sees anyone not named Trump (and even some named Trump, like his niece) as a potential enemy. After his treatment of people like Cohen, Barr, and Pence that should be patently obvious.
He sees Putin, Kim, and peers not as enemies but role models.
They're gonna ban alcohol stoves (Score:3)
EPA seems to follow California. California CARB banned denatured alcohol last year, which is sort of stupid because it's in flex fuel. It's made from a natural renewable resource, finally it's the safest fuel source for camping or boat stoves. It's OK to burn in an engine mixed with other crap, but god forbid I need a cuppa tea on my sailboat. EPA is about to go full retard, hang tight.
EPA (Score:4, Funny)
I guess nowadays EPA stands for the Environmental Pollution Agency...
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I propose: Epic Polluting Assholes
MAC (Score:1)
Can we get the EPA name changed to EDA (Environmental Destruction Agency) to more accurately describe its role?
Sigh (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree with the death cult remark.
I don't know well why they choose these stupid beliefs. Especially at the very end of a mandate that will be subject to ridicule for eons. Sometimes i think they realize they are rednecks and they fault the "elites" for not loving them enough and try to punish the society out of spite. "We, the worst are in fact the most authentic and we will show ya' " Populist weaklings leaning on the social trash.
Cut your nose to spite your face
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I don't know well why they choose these stupid beliefs
Hit he nail on the head: they CHOOSE to believe the lies.
Good reg (Score:2)
The primary reg to which the left objects requires open sourcing of raw data. In the wake of numerous scandals over at least the past decade involving bogus papers -- some politically motivated -- and results that could not be reproduced, as well as erroneous analyses of data, there is a large movement in science -- actual science, not the "science" of the left -- to require disclosure of raw data.
The current administration may be doing it for the wrong reasons, namely to gain some political advantage, but
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Of course they object. Part of that data is private medical information. Those who asked for disclosure of such information knew very well it would not be disclosed. It is a ploy to exclude genuine research as inputs of a national policy.
It is not "the left" who objects. It is the scientists and medical people. I object to that rule and i am not left wing.
Which will be repealed in just over a week (Score:2)
By the incoming Biden administration. This is just break everything he can before the Secret Service drags Trumpolini out, kicking and screaming.