SCOTUS Pauses EPA Plan To Keep Smog From Drifting Across State Lines (theverge.com) 101
The Supreme Court decided to press pause on the Environmental Protection Agency's plan to prevent smog-forming pollutants from drifting across state borders. From a report: Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, and various trade organizations including fossil fuel industry groups asked the Supreme Court to issue a stay on the plan while they contest the EPA's actions in lower courts. SCOTUS agreed to put the plan on hold today in its opinion on Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency. Five justices voted in favor of halting implementation for now, while the remaining justices dissented.
"If anything, we see one reason for caution after another," Justice Neil Gorsuch writes in his opinion. While the stay is temporary, the decision signals that the conservative-leaning Supreme Court is likely to rule in favor of states opposing the EPA's plan if the issue makes it to the nation's highest court again for a final decision on the plan's legal merit. That could make it harder to improve air quality across the nation since air pollutants typically don't stay in one place.
"If anything, we see one reason for caution after another," Justice Neil Gorsuch writes in his opinion. While the stay is temporary, the decision signals that the conservative-leaning Supreme Court is likely to rule in favor of states opposing the EPA's plan if the issue makes it to the nation's highest court again for a final decision on the plan's legal merit. That could make it harder to improve air quality across the nation since air pollutants typically don't stay in one place.
Great, more reading (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to have to read this plan, because so far as I'm aware the only way to stop airborne pollution from going where the air goes is to not emit it in the first place.
Having said that, financial motivations work well; downwind states should sue for the resulting damage to their population's health.
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Unsurprisingly, EPA concurs and obligates upwind polluters to stop polluting:
The EPA’s Good Neighbor Plan compels 23 “upwind” states to curb certain pollutants from power plants and other industrial facilities before it drifts to other states downwind of them.
Which appears to have made polluters so upset that they've bought themselves a temporary permission to pollute with 5 judges of the US supreme court.
And you know which 5 judges, the ones that tend to accept bribes.
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Awwwell, ain't that sweet.
All is okay, I guess, let's all go back to the 1840s ;)
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...as it's kind of what those states do best. The constitutional loophole to pollute for liberty
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Yeah, we wouldn't want these guys to have to pay taxes on their bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H "gratuities" would we?
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It makes admitting to premeditated exchange of money a crime. All any elected official has to say now is that is wasn't premeditated. Tipping elected officials for behavior is allowed now.
Get out your wallets, plebes. You'll need to tip for the good behavior, and vote--better--I guess, if you feel it's going to override a heavier wallet and you can feel good about that. Justice for a price is here from the highest court is the most powerful nation in the world.
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The case in point wasn't a "gratuity" it was for "consulting work."
Of which, several sources reported that, there was substantially none.
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I believe the latest Supreme Court ruling reclassified those bribes as legal gratuities. https://www.ibj.com/articles/s... [ibj.com]
To be fair, this The Supreme Court rules that state officials can engage in a little corruption, as a treat [vox.com] (and other sources) notes (emphasis mine):
In any event, the decision in Snyder is narrow. It does not rule that Congress could not ban gratuities. It simply rules that this particular statute only reaches bribes. ... Kavanaugh notes that the statute at issue in Snyder, like a different statute that only concerns bribes, uses the word “corruptly”.
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Why "no more manufacturing"?
You must be really poorly educated if you sincerely believe that making something requires you pollute indiscriminately.
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Because for a lot of people things are either all or nothing so in this case the above seems to believe that the effected states will have to choose between zero pollution or how things are now. Of course that's not the case here at all but that certainly seems to be what they are saying.
I'm often amazed how often I see this type of reasoning both in real life and on Slashdot.
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Yep, really sad.
Re: Great, more reading (Score:5, Insightful)
When you brought campfires into the discussion you lost me. Your last paragraph acknowledges that the EPA was instrumental in cleaning up horrible pollution, dumping and so on. But you seem to think innovation and improvements in technology and mitigation are impossible. I don't know why.
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Building a campfire pollutes according to the extreme greenies.
What does that have to do with the EPA plan and my comment? Go argue with them extreme greenies, they're not present in this thread, strawman builder.
I don't trust what the EPA says it pollution anymore
Yes, you're the exact opposite of the "extreme greenies" that you imagine - you define yourself through "them", but with a minus sign. That explains why you appear to believe indiscriminate pollution has some merit. It doesn't.
I mean, we're polluting MUCH less in the US today, and yet they're now complaining of something blowing from one state to another?
You obviously have a difficulty to grasp the idea that "much less" overall can still be "too much" somewhere.
I'm sorry for your poor ed
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Building a campfire does pollute. Not a lot. Approximately one campfire's worth. You don't need to be an extremist to believe that; you just have to have gone camping with my Dad.
Anyway, for sure, one campfire is not gonna cause much global environmental damage. A hundred million campfires, burning every night for a hundred years? Now we're talkin'. Just because we as a society have moved all those gigacampfires inside a power plant owned by a TVA doesn't undo the damage.
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Yes. Polluters should be able to pollute as much as is profitable without any concern for the environment or human health./s
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I sincerely apologize, I'm old-fashioned, stubborn and too much invested in the pathetic and wrong theories of economics and public finance to recognize the depth of this wisdom.
In my ignorance, I still claim it is the disgusting, harmful and criminal behaviour that used to be known as "corruption".
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I sincerely apologize, I'm old-fashioned, stubborn and too much invested in the pathetic and wrong theories of economics and public finance to recognize the depth of this wisdom.
In my ignorance, I still claim it is the disgusting, harmful and criminal behaviour that used to be known as "corruption".
Haven't you heard? In the post-truth era, corruption has been "upgraded" to being a positive thing. The more corrupt you are, the more profit you make. And, as we all know, the be-all, end-all of human existence is money. Greed is God. You shall have no other before it. Therefore, corruption that leads to profit is good.
Not that I have that stance myself, but it's impossible to view our society, as it exists, and not come to the above conclusion. Society values profit. Society does not value right (as in ri
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Yes, I've come to that conclusion already - I often comment here about how capitalism has subverted democracy.
We'll have to do something about that, and fast, because the process is now very cheap and smooth and so very hard to block effectively.
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"upgraded" is oldspeak. The correct newspeak [slashdot.org] term is "doubleplusgood".
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The other conservative justices saw what Thomas was getting and decided they'll have what he is having.
Re:Great, more reading (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, if a federal employee accepts anything more valuable than a cup of coffee as a gift, they can go to prison.
But the supreme court justices themselves can accept hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts with absolutely zero oversight whatsoever.
The way our government deals with this issue is absolutely bonkers.
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It's actually very consistent - the US is moving further away from rule of law and closer to might makes right.
The Supreme Court has just (again) told Americans it can do what it wants and there's nothing Americans can do about it. Half agree, the other half accept it out of fear of destroying trust in the institution.
As an outsider... It's incredible, sad, and horrifying simultaneously. In a reasonable nation there would have been riots and people getting murdered by angry mobs. Instead, it seems like
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In a reasonable nation there would have been riots and people getting murdered by angry mobs.
How the hell is that "reasonable behavior" in a democracy? "Reasonable behavior" in a democracy is settling ones political disagreements through the ballot boxes. What you're talking about is literally the "might makes right" reasoning you allude to at the beginning of your post, it's literally using the fear of physical reprisal to create change.
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It's MORE reasonable than allowing the situation to continue (and likely get worse). A truly reasonable nation wouldn't have this issue in the first place.
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You sound like an extremist seeking to justify their extremist views. "Using force and violence to push through my political ideals is justified if the popular will isnt creating the change that I want" is all you're really saying here. Or in other words, your political ideals are so much better than others they can skip the whole democracy thing and just be forced through over the will of the people.
The US has had enough of violent people trying the change things through force with the attempted pro Trump
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The US has had enough of violent people trying the change things through force with the attempted pro Trump insurrection,
Has it though? A substantial fraction of the voting public think that was all OK.
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Certainly not a majority of people though. We should be happy that's the case too as if we hit a majority for such things then our democracy wont be long for this world and we'll be back to might makes right and you only need to open a history book to find out how well living like that goes.
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"How the hell is that "reasonable behavior" in a democracy?"
It's reasonable any time voting isn't a viable solution. That's true whether you're not allowed to vote, or your votes are ignored.
Unfortunately liberals are generally cowardly and weak compared to conservatives, and take the same view you're taking, so things have to collapse pretty much completely before they will take action.
Democrats tell us to vote harder if we want them to save human rights, but then they don't protect them when they are in p
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Seems to me the cowards are the ones too cowardly to see their grievances settled democratically and want to use force to push through change over the popular will of the people.
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Yes, we know which party are the ones too cowardly to see their grievances settled democratically, is opposed to having each vote count equally, and opposed to things like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact [wikipedia.org]
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Sure, the solution to such things isnt to lower yourself to their level though through violence.
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Perhaps you don't know how the world works. Violence may be what society is built on, but for civilized society there's a bunch of layers in front of the violence where possible. Eg don't murder people, or violence will be done to you, with a few civilized steps like arrests and trial before hand. Pay your taxes, or we'll ask the bank to transfer your assets to the government, or the bank employees will be arrested, etc. But never without violence as the final "or else".
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Perhaps you don't know how the world works.
Perhaps you don't understand the conversation. I say this because you're not talking about the same type of violence the rest of us are.
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Everyone except maybe you is talking about "rule of law or else violence".
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Wait, so are you saying the Jan 6th rioters are the patriots they claim to be?
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No, because what they were doing wasn't trying to hold government accountable. It was just trying to change the outcome to an even shittier one that they prefer.
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They would certainly tell you that they were trying to hold government accountable.
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That's because the particular "they" you are referring to are radicalized cultists. I usually make it a point to not believe the conditioned responses that cultists offer as justification for their deranged behavior.
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Other than the fact that they are a bunch of ignorant, violent fools fighting for a lie claiming oppression they weren't suffering?
Sure.
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Great, so you're all in favor of violent mobs attacking the center of government of your own country every time they disagree with what's going politically on then? I'd be curious how long proper civil rights can last under such conditions, why dont you go get some people together and run a little experiment for us?
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Democrats tell us to vote harder if we want them to save human rights, but then they don't protect them when they are in power. Republicans, if course, are just in the business of taking them away.
Consider the viewpoint of a completely viable fetus being aborted out of convenience. The Republicans would appear to be the ones saving human rights, while the Democrats are literally cheering for murder.
Furthermore, dehumanizing abortion by framing it as "human rights" or "womens health" only makes the issue more polarizing. I think we'd be able to have a much more civil discussion about it if the left didn't treat it like a simple mistake to be fixed by popping Plan B in the morning.
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democracy is settling ones political disagreements through the ballot boxes
Ever since Citizens United, the ballot boxes haven't been connected to anything. Your and I vote means nothing when elections, and behaviors of politicians after election, is primarily influenced by unlimited money. I cannot and do not condone violence, but this has become a problem that is going to be incredibly difficult to "vote away".
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And that's the critical difference between morons and patriots: what you're fighting for and which methods you use to fight.
Violence is the last resort of the incompetent. Well .. the incompetence is proven, the system is being subverted by fascists and peaceful correction is getting less likely daily. Waiting until your wannabe oppressors are firmly in power is not the optimal strategy.
Maybe that'll change tonight. Hopefully I'm wrong and violence is unnecessary for sanity to prevail. I am as yet uncon
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Citizens United certainly had its negative effects on our democracy but your claim is ridiculous. Votes are still submitted one per citizen and properly counted and outside of the presidency whatever gets the most votes wins the day.
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Votes are still submitted one per citizen and properly counted
While 100% accurate, saying money doesn't affect the outcome assumes an educated and intelligent population. It's astounding what unlimited money can do to sway an easily influenced populace. Those with the money have this country at each others throats over abortion, the Southern Border, where people are/are not allowed to pee, or any number of issues that are used to distract us while they're pickpocketing us. The only real place we the people retain any sort of power is in local elections, and even tho
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While 100% accurate, saying money doesn't affect the outcome assumes an educated and intelligent population.
I never made this claim. I even began my post stating that Citizens United has had a negative effect on our democracy. What I'm doing is disagreeing with the amount of influence you seem to be claiming this case has when you stated "Ever since Citizens United, the ballot boxes haven't been connected to anything.".
As a supporting citation to further my case https://fivethirtyeight.com/fe... [fivethirtyeight.com]
Instead, he and Lau agreed, the strong raw association between raising the most cash and winning probably has more to do with big donors who can tell (based on polls or knowledge of the district or just gut-feeling woo-woo magic) that one candidate is more likely to win — and then they give that person all their money.
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probably has more to do with big donors who can tell (based on polls or knowledge of the district or just gut-feeling woo-woo magic)
Well shit, that's settled then. The ruling class probably just use their gut-feelings and magic (that's really all polls are worth anyway) to decide who to give their unlimited piles of money to. They really are just waiting around to see what cream rises to the top, them make sure the polling was right by unloading truckloads of cash on them.
I never made this claim.
Never said you did. That's my claim.
Whatever, though dude. I'm just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point. Just go vote.
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Whatever, though dude. I'm just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point.
Oh, my apologies if I sounded overly confrontational. That wasnt my intent.
That article I posted is a good read btw as it does a good job explaining and providing citation for how money, while making a bit of difference in an election, likely doesnt make as much of a difference as many people believe.
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The interesting part to me though is how ineffective campaign ads actually are which the article covers. They make a difference but again, not nearly as much as a lot of people think.
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How the hell is that "reasonable behavior" in a democracy? "Reasonable behavior" in a democracy is settling ones political disagreements through the ballot boxes. What you're talking about is literally the "might makes right" reasoning you allude to at the beginning of your post, it's literally using the fear of physical reprisal to create change.
In a democracy it's not. In a corporate oligarchy it's probably about on par with signing a declaration of independence and going to war with a king.
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The Supreme Court has just (again) told Americans it can do what it wants and there's nothing Americans can do about it.
Congress has reformed the Supreme Court several times in the past. They can do so again. The rules of the Supreme Court are not specified in the Constitution. Congress decided how many Justices there are, and that their terms are "for life". All of that is subject to change.
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Well, there's a whole lot of people that are angry as hell about it, but there's absolutely no recourse available to anyone in 2024, because the only remedy available to a lifetime-appointed SCOTUS judge is impeachment; impeachment starts in the House of Representatives, and this House Majority absolutely isn't going to do shit because it's THEIR judges that are bought.
It takes at least an Act of Congress to do anything, and this Congress can't even get the votes to rename a Post Office without some kind of
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Wait, does that mean if I pay a gratuity before I receive service it's legally a bribe? Someone better tell GrubHub!
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Unsurprisingly, EPA concurs and obligates upwind polluters to stop polluting:
The EPA’s Good Neighbor Plan compels 23 “upwind” states to curb certain pollutants from power plants and other industrial facilities before it drifts to other states downwind of them.
Which appears to have made polluters so upset that they've bought themselves a temporary permission to pollute with 5 judges of the US supreme court.
And you know which 5 judges, the ones that tend to accept bribes.
It's a little more complex than that in this case, I'd suggest you do some reading. The market for NOx already existed, and has been functional for almost a decade in several of these states (Indiana, Ohio, and WV among them). I'll give you a bit of a synopsis, since I've actually worked with these rules as a side project for a few years now.
As a high level, CSAPR is the same kind of cap and trade system that has been used for many other pollutants, where the EPA calculates what a reasonable emission level is for the pollutant using the best commercially available technology that is of a reasonable cost (and yes, its a comically ambiguous way to structure it, but it's how we do a lot of emissions controls in the US). Based on those calculations they allocate a certain number of credits at the state level and overall for the pool of participating states, and allocate them amongst entities that produce emissions. If you don't have enough credits to cover your emissions, you have to either install more pollution controls, buy excess from someone else that's doing better than the standard and has some to sell, or shut down.
For NOx in particular this is designed to cut down on smog in urban centers. There has been much crowing recently because states in the northeast aren't meeting their mandated state level targets for smog reduction, and it's basically entirely due to them not wanting to step on the political landmine of dealing with too many cars idling on freeways. But they're pushing hard the excuse that, no, it's not really their fault, it's just that upwind smog needs to be reduced more and then they'd meet the guidelines. In my opinion it's BS, but that's the argument right now.
Anyway, a couple years ago the EPA under the Biden administration decided to over double the number of states subject to these rules, while at the same time taking a lot of actions to make the NOx market significantly more restrictive (wiping out banked credits for utilities that were saving excess because they did better than anticipated, among other things). The aim was pretty transparently to shut down coal plants further south and west, regardless of actual ozone drift impact. It also tried to expand the rules to industries like steel and chemical manufacturing (really all heavy industry). The whole thing was a bit of a clusterfuck honestly... it very much seemed like a "quick, lets really rachet down on this while the administration is favorable." Anyway, long story short the new states sued and basically started a legal process that could have taken a decade, and the EPA was very much not guaranteed to win.
So EPA decided in its infinite wisdom that rather than give up for now, or develop a new plan that accomplished their goals but tailored to the original market participants, they were going to implement their new plan anyway just with a smaller pool of states. Which is, in a word, ridiculous. The expanded CSAPR rules were designed with a vastly larger pool of states in mind, which is important because it's a market. Also because of the extreme expansion of the scope of the rule, a factory just over the border in one state would have a massive cost advantage... effectively you could see a mass exodus of industry from the states where this is in effect to states just west of them. The whole thing needed to go back to the drawing board to evaluate impacts, because these regulations are explicitly not supposed to be designed to bankrupt compa
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There is something called 'prevailing wind'. While it is no indicator of which way the wind might blow next Tuesday on your street, at larger scales and over longer time frames you can usually predict what is going to happen.
If these trends are strong enough at the scale you're dealing with, you can indeed effectively identify one place as upwind or downwind of another.
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Yeah! How dare someone else not want to breathe in your pollution! Wind is just too complicated to understand, so all that pollution just isn't your fault!
Did you even think before you posted that? Are you capable of thinking at all, or does selfish self interest help you maintain willful ignorance at the expense of your neighbours?
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Yeah, how dare a national environmental regulatory agency actually try to regulate national environmental concerns on a national scope. Much overreach! So Tyranny!
Or, environmental regulation can really only take place at the federal level, because pollution doesn't give a fuck about arbitrary lines on a map, and having polluter-friendly states doesn't keep the pollution in those states. Thus, the regulation of air pollution in neighboring states matters quite a bit to states that are downwind / downrive
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Sure. I just don't really see how you could take that field of prevailing-wind vectors (Which is a... "tensor"? No, no chance I'm using that right) and arrive at just 23 states that are classified as "upwind" and 27 that are "downwind". (Or maybe 25, because we ignore AK an HI?) Naively, here in the Prevailing Westerlies, one would expect every single state up to be upwind of its neighbors to the east and downwind of the neighbors to the west, except for the ones on the coasts.
This stinks of motivated r
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Pollution is considered woke now?
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You do know that air pollution very rarely stays where it's created, and doesn't bind itself to arbitrary lines on a map?
It's really not that hard to fathom that there might be some coal power plants along major rivers that also serve as geographical boundaries between states. Like, for example, this one [google.com] sitting at the corner of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Or this one sitting a few miles further downriver in Kentucky [google.com], where the Ohio River is the border between Kentucky and Indiana.
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a) came from the location you think they did
b) are proven to cause the issues you are saying that they do.
c) are in no way caused by anything that may have been injecting these types of compounds from anywhere else.
I am sure smarter people than I can come up with a d, e, f, etc
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You're overthinking it; dumber, more ignorant people will come up with the reasons. Or corrupt ones.
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They probably were planning to build some walls or something. That seems to be a "modern" solution to all problems these days ...
Of course, just let your neighbors choke on the poison is a time-honored way to dispose of it.
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Allegedly (Score:3, Insightful)
The reasons are written in very small print on $100 bills... Allegedly.
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And truly legal, too, as @rayzat explained to me upthread.
https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
Reeling in the EPA (Score:1, Insightful)
When you hear conservatives talk about the 54 year old agency (created by Richard Nixon) suddenly being too powerful, this is why. Lobbyists are paying good money to allow pollution to fall in other states. Alito can take his free luxury Alaskan vacations to escape the pollution https://www.propublica.org/art... [propublica.org] and Thomas can drive his free motorhome where he pleases. https://apnews.com/article/sup... [apnews.com]
Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Benito Alito and Clarence Ruckus et al. (Score:1, Funny)
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Plutocracy At Work
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Alito cites whatever fits his worldview. Like a 17th century witch hunter. https://www.propublica.org/art... [propublica.org] Thomas flat out says his decisions are based on "making liberals lives miserable" https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com] Compare that picture of Thomas to Uncle Ruckus https://boondocks.fandom.com/w... [fandom.com]
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Scum floats to the top. What else is new?
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Sometimes God is generous ... if you know who currently pretends to be its servants.
downwind fog (Score:1)
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You can't, other than not emitting the smog in the fist place.
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So am I allowed to just rock up (Score:2)
Always Amazed... (Score:2)
When people greenlight unlimited Federal power just because it happens to match their political motivations. It's perfectly reasonable to insist that our elected officials govern us and not delegate said governance to apparatchiks at random. If anything, the left's response to this is a scathing self-rebuke of progressivism. "We can't have what we want if the representative government stays involved in the process!"