That’s what happens when you commission an agency acting on orders to protect an amorphous concept like environment with lessening consideration for protecting people, citizens, individual liberty, civilization, or a host of other concepts that make environmental protection much less agency possible at all.Wish I'd written that.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Quote of the Week. Maybe of the Month.
Brian J. Noggle on the conceptual problem with an "Environmental Protection Agency":
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11 comments:
Yea verily!
Back in the '60s, I was visiting my relatives in Weirton, W.V., a Steel Town. Prior to the EPA, the Mill was running 24/7, people were earning good money, but the air stank. I asked my Uncle John what the smell was. "Les, that's the smell of Money. When that smell goes away, then so will the money."
Then they created the EPA.
Then the smell went over to Asia.
So did the Money and the Jobs.
Frack the EPA.
The EPA considers a milk spill an "environmental hazard" because it contains animal fat.
Years ago, I remember reading a "letter to the editor" in a guitar magazine. In it, an EPA wonk bragged about how he shut down a vacuum tube manufacturer in WV(?) due to environmental concerns. He was not at all concerned about the loss of revenue or jobs or the impact it may have on the the local economy.
The EPA needs to be reigned in before they do us all in.
Having been around EPA doings since its beginnings, IMO it has gone way beyond the initial goals.
Lake Erie was dead. The Cuyahoga River caught fire and melted a bridge. In Houston, you could not see the sunrise because of the smog. The Houston ship channel caused second degree burns on a swimmer because of its acid content. The Trinity River was highly polluted. The greater Los Angeles basin was hidden under a smog cloud and could not be seen from an airplane.
Those sorts of problems were solved or at worst partially solved.
Now? "They've quit preaching and gone to meddling."
The EPA is purely a NIMBY type of organization that really does more to harm "Mother Gaia" than it does to help. Here's the breakdown.
- Widget factory in the US: Polution is held to a minimum because the surrounding populace would sue the crap out of them if it wasn't.
- EPA comes in and shuts factory down.
- Production is moved to : The third world country doesn't give a crap about polution so factory doesn't bother with minimizing polution. Widgets have to be shipped half way around the world to reach the same customers (expending more energy, causing more polution).
Net effect: An enormous increase in polution in the world, but at least it isn't "in my back yard". Amirite?
The eco-hippies that applauded the EPA for shutting down the widget factory are either bad at math, or fucking hypocrites.... or both...
s
"The eco-hippies that applauded the EPA for shutting down the widget factory are either bad at math, or fucking hypocrites.... or both..."
Nah. They just hate America.
Nathan,
I would argue that if an eco-hippie hates America more than he/she/it hates polution... than said eco-hippie is an eco-hypocrite.
s
I will say this: Anybody who shut down a vacuum tube factory in the US should burn in hell. As a connoisseur of tube amps back in the day finding good amp tubes was a serious chore, especially matched sets for power tubes. There was nothing worse than finding someone who decked out the pre-amp section of an old Supro with Sovteks....GAG!
Here in California, oil spills on the ground are a big, big deal. An oil truck was cited for a minor oil leak, on the street next to the La Brea Tar Pits.
If you haven't been there, I recommend it. Be careful where you walk though, because the oil still bubbles up through the parking lot and various places in Hancock Park.
http://www.justabovesunset.com/id923.html
I mowed the laws at the EPA once when I was a day-laborer, used a stinky gas mower and laughed the whole time. That's DC for you.
Here in California the Pacific Ocean leaks oil all over the beaches of Santa Barbara where a big pile of ecocrits live and use Nuclear power (Daiblo Canyon) to electrify their Priuses.
Its not an accident. EPA has been staffed with people who don't like civilization. Period.
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