It's a problem with collective action on a lot of climate problems in particular; the benefits are in the future and dilute while the costs are concentrated and immediate. Because of that there's a LOT of money available to push off imposing those costs and no direct money available to push for imposing them.
[0] Giant air quotes here because the approved disposal method is usually a poorly maintained pond that leeches into the water anyways.
If someone dumped tons of deadly chemicals into a river for no reason, and those actions resulted in the long-term deaths of thousands, they'd go to jail. But if that person does the same thing for profit, as an executive of a massive conglomerate, nothing happens to them.
As for piercing the veil it's rarely super clear that someone high up actually forced the pollution to happen. All the internal policies and emails usually say the right thing but the incentives, pressures and money all put pressure to people down the ladder to skirt the rules the inevitably leads to disaster.
From that perspective, deregulating areas which prevent us from competing in historically outsourced industries with large ecological footprints makes perfect sense to them.
I expect this to have a bet-negative impact on our ecosystems, and quality of life. But with any luck, our more informed public - faced with the real externalities of their lifestyles, will be more readily swayed to adjust their consumption patterns in order to make for a better world.
And that's why there's a lot of people who hate regulations, especially environmental regulations. They have a very concrete harm from the regulations that they can see (they can't do certain actions), and the benefits are not so easily noticed. Labor regulations, where the benefits are much more easily visible and relatable are likely to have higher support, although I suspect that a large rural constituency wouldn't mind seeing child labor laws repealed.
(And if you're told you can't turn a swamp into a field, for example, you also ought to get paid for effectively having to maintain a public resource.)
Actually, the local village did offer to buy all the wetlands and a bit more [for road access] to turn into parkland, but my grandparents turned the offer down.
Given Watt's public pillorying, methinks the others learned to keep their apocalyptic beliefs on the down low. Mostly.
I really wish people on the "left" would learn that when people voice such beliefs to believe them, that they're not joking.
Edit: Oops. Just saw natch's reply. Sorry for dupe.
- Eliminating existing grandfathered-in wood burning fireplaces. Costs almost nothing as measured by dollars.
- Emission controls on restaurant exhaust. This is currently required only for restaurants that chat-grill more than a certain amount of beef. Restaurants that smoke up whole blocks grilling pork, lamb, veggies, etc are exempt. These emission controls are not that expensive.
- Outdated fuel-burning devices such as 2-stroke leaf blowers and old cars. Electric leaf blowers are cheap now. Old cars are fun, and banning or taxing them would be unpopular but would cost almost zero dollars.
https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/6c4535d/214...
I would imagine that the average restaurant grill emits very little NOx and a whole lot of PM2.5.
The cleanup for it started in 2006 and is ongoing today. It's only within the past decade that fish finally started swimming in the river. And now the neighborhoods that it runs through are seeing huge increases in property values and new development as this former toxic waste dump is now converted into water-front bike trails and parks.
We absolutely still see the benefits of the Clean Water Act today.
It all comes down to their ideology, which in a nutshell comes down to: maximizing profits and (perceived) short-term gains for its core constituency (i.e. business elites) - and where that's not quite possible, at least keep the illusion of an every-expanding, anything goes "free market" system chugging along for another year or two -- at the expense of everyone and everything else -- and all common sense to boot.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/does-yo...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter
Voting is actually the least effective means of democratic change (It is more effective then sitting at home, and complaining.) The second least effective means of democratic change is getting other people to vote. The most effective means of democratic change is picking the candidates that will be in the running - before voting happens - which can largely be done with dollars.
[1] https://freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/does-money-really-buy-el...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter
There's also the tried-and-true strategy of paying off both candidates, so that regardless who wins, they'll be beholden to you.
The "maximizing profits" trope simply doesn't explain why oil and gas has such an outsize influence. If profits are what mattered, the tech sector would have tremendous influence, but it doesn't. It doesn't, because unlike oil and gas it doesn't employ tons of non-college workers in swing states, and the cost of their products doesn't hit everyone in the wallet once a week. Profits are secondary or tertiary at best.
I agree that these kinds of supports (to certain industry sectors) don't always do all that much to maximize their profits (short, let alone long).
The real reason behind them is their symbolic effect. It's the idea of a limitless (and infinitely exploitable) "frontier" -- and the inherent, sacred right of private capital to manage that exploitation, unfettered by regulation -- that they seek to defend with these actions. (That, and the repudiation of basic science on general principles of course).
That some of their donors (who as I'm sure you know will individually benefit many magnitudes of order more than individual consumers will from the temporary increase in economic potential) is a nice plus (icing on the cake) as it were -- but it's not the main driver.
You try to skirt around the issue saying the profits are maybe being passed down the consumer more than one thinks, ok valid. But the point still remains that everything that is being done is to maximize short term profits / cut short term consumer costs.
>policies that make oil and gas products cheaper popular with voters not just popular with "business elites."
Well.. so what? Of course 95% of people would generally say "MAKE THINGS CHEAPER!" That doesn't mean it should be done.
Besides, you are also making it sound like more people would rather have cheaper gas than a long-sustainable environment. Not so sure you are right on that one.
That's not it at all. It politics, not ideology.
The fossil fuel industries in the US are huge. They employ millions of people.
But those industries are rightly under attack for causing climate change and generally destroying the environment. If we did the right thing and priced carbon and prohibited pollution then they would be uncompetitive. Those forms of energy would cost more than solar or nuclear or something else and those people would lose their jobs.
Which is what needs to happen, but did you really think they'd go down without a fight? Any politician who wants to win an election in those districts is going to be under pressure to take the "screw the environment to save the oil industry" position. It happens that the oil and coal deposits are disproportionately in red states, so that's where those constituents live and those are the politicians saddled with that voting block.
This is a different motivation than an ideological preference for actual deregulation, which would have them e.g. refusing to regulate the tech industry rather than calling for some ridiculous anti-encryption nonsense.
To get rid of it you need to do one of two things. One option is that when the other team gets in they need to do a better job of completely smashing those industries into smithereens so they no longer represent a powerful constituency (e.g. Obama could have done this but didn't), but they pay a short term cost for doing that. They'd almost certainly lose the next election because in the short term the people whose jobs you just destroyed are going to be angry and resentful. You also run the risk that after you lose the election the other team comes in and undoes what you did.
The other option, and this is the really great one, is that you also pick some evil constituency of the other team and have everyone get together and destroy them both at once, so that politically it cancels out. But that requires a level of bipartisanship that isn't currently very common. It's everybody doing something which is good for the country even though it yields no partisan advantage, and that's not really how modern politicians think, so how do you get it to happen?
Besides, post-2016 it appears the business elites have switched sides.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelt...
No, it's very easy. Environmental regulations cost money. Lots of money. It's much more profitable to keep these externalities.
Repealing regulations (not necessarily environmental ones) was popular enough to be a Trump campaign promise, after all.
- Piles of money for military and FBI projects in the same bill
- Despite there being 5 unemployed for every free job not wanting to pay people so much that they will incentivized not to work
- Not waiting to provide additional funds to states to deal with the current crisis
That’s a narrow-minded view. Sure, environmental regulations cost oil and gas companies money.
But this fails to consider the external costs to society: increased healthcare costs and reduced life expectancy due to air and water pollution, future costs of global heating including property damage to coastal cities from rising sea levels, agricultural regions becoming less productive, etc.
Secondly, reducing dependence on fossil fuels (many of which are imported, even in America) will improve energy security and reduce energy costs in the long term. Great economic benefits, as well as environmental ones.
And guess who is making donations, hiring nephews, and making up parts of portfolios. What the parent was saying is that externalities don't matter to these people because we don't value externalities as a society.
It's a winning strategy. Not only in the US, but across most of the Anglo sphere. As an added bonus it provides huge payoffs to billionaires at the cost of the poor and middle class.
Not in the UK. Coal use has plummeted by 84% in 5 years (84 million tonnes in 2014 to 8 million tonnes in 2019), while renewable energy has been hugely expanded. All under “right wing” (Conservative) governments.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/09/is-this-...
And their target demographic isn't too interested in facts, so they'll never learn the reality that it was deregulation lead to a natural gas boom, which lead to the free market dealing the death blow to coal. So they can keep selling evil job killing regulations as the reason for the decline of everything great in this country.
Renewables get the headlines, but those coal plants are mostly being replaced with natural gas ones. The media reports "renewables overtake coal for the first time," which gives the false impression that solar and wind are displacing coal. But that's not what's really happening, which is that those former coal plants now burn natural gas because it's cheaper.
Not true in the UK. Natural gas use has also declined, albeit only slightly, in recent years. There has also been a net loss of capacity in the past decade as more old NG plants have closed than new ones built.
Meanwhile, coal, which produced 42% of all UK electricity as recently as 2012, has almost gone to zero while renewables (the bulk of which is offshore wind) are at 37% - and growing every year.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Natural-Gas-Has-Replaced-Ov...
Or should they consider these against long-term costs incurred by everyone? Surely there is a middle ground that works for everyone. It’s not as if major oil companies are struggling to survive.
We don't live in a world where we get to speculate on what the intended role of government ought to be.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
Once it's personal, and they can't buy their way out then improvements can be maintained.
Better yet, they and their spouses and children.
I don't think that's the whole story. You also have Zombie Reaganism, which has the Republicans reflexively aping 80s policy as the response to everything, even though it's not the 80s anymore.
I agree that it is apparently a bonding exercise among certain capital-crowds to dismantle and mock environmental protections. The real world works like that.
I meant like literally. Where does the money that is spent meeting environmental regulations go? The money is not just being burnt up. It's going to a different segment of the economy, I'm just not versed in what that means or looks like.
Anyway, that money is generally spent on equipment and processes to clean up after whatever the company is doing. Collection pods for contaminated water. Scrubbers on chimneys. Direct pay to inspectors to come out and make sure you aren't trying to cheat to save money. That sort of thing. It spreads out across the entire economy. Markets and industries are formed to support finding the cheapest way to keep the processes in question from damaging the environment and requiring much more expensive cleanup (think EPA superfund and class action lawsuits over medical conditions suffered by nearby communities) after the fact.
Why can't Democrats get that message across?
The EPA is rightfully tired of cleaning up industry messes and would much prefer that the pollution not happen in the first place. It's much easier and cheaper to clean up that way.
So these regulations are all about preventing companies from passing on the costs of cleanup to the general public. One way or another you're paying for it, and it's much less expensive in almost every case if you pay for it up front. The only problem is that the free market doesn't price in externalities unless you force it to (via regulation) so the pollute now and let the public clean it up later approach is always going to win in an unregulated market.
With an administration willing to do anything for a little grift, and demographic changes threatening the governing dynamic (non-hispanic whites will be ~50% of the population by 2030-2040), this is the time to cash in.
That said, it also does seem like this narrative of "regulation is ruining everything", as a sort of objection to regulation as a concept without reference to what the regulation is regulation, has seen an uptick recently, between Trumpism and Brexit.
There's a part of it that's performative. Liberals care about the environment and want to impose regulations, ergo conservatives should disregard the environment and should roll back regulations.
Of course, this is a ridiculous line of reasoning. But it's not meant to convince anyone who would recognize how illogical that is.
Some regulations have low cost and high benefit. They should be kept.
Others have high cost and low benefit. They should be removed or reformed.
For regulations that have low cost and high benefit, the costs are often borne by few people, but the benefits are spread among many. Those who bear the costs scream loudly; those who reap the benefits may be mildly grateful. And those who bear the costs try very hard to make this regulation look like it is high-cost and low-benefit.
And the same is true in reverse for regulations that are high-cost and low-benefit. Those who receive the benefit try very hard (and very loudly) to make it seem that the regulation is low-cost and high-benefit.
This can make it hard to determine which kind of regulation is which, even if you genuinely want to. But regulations are political, and politicians care about votes, not necessarily about costs and benefits. As long as the narrow interests care deeply (and vote accordingly), the politicians are not likely to care about the wider interests.
I have an early-90s Volkswagen van. It came with a very underpowered and fuel-thirsty gas engine. Eventually it could barely make it up the hills around here, and was prohibitively expensive (not to mention unreliable) to use practically.
I replaced the old engine with a modern TDI that gets ~33mpg and is undoubtably cleaner than the 80s-era technology that powered it before. It gave the van a renewed life, keeping it from being crushed and precluding the environmental cost of building a new car. And above all, it solved my problem in a mentally engaging way.
For this I have been rewarded with constant red tape from the state department of air quality and EPA. They test tailpipe opacity while driving it on a set of rollers (if I can find a tech that knows how to drive stick shift). The standard to beat is 20% opaque, which would choke out the room. Despite the LED/opto pair usually measuring less than 1% opaque, it once measured 100% opaque. Think about that for a minute.
I am not the only one to have done something like this, much less the only one to have EPA-mandated portable gas container designs break & spill, EPA-mandated sensor systems break and cost hundreds, etc. I'm not the only one who's been annoyed by land closures (despite having a permit) due to the EPA's concerns of dust entering the air. This is to say nothing of e.g. the farmers who have had increased compliance costs and fines for operating on their own land. A politician coming out against the EPA is an immediate emotional appeal to many people who are somewhat likely to support Trump's ideas to begin with. These people feel they have been hamstrung by the man, and apparently think that mining for uranium in the Grand Canyon is a reasonable price to pay to beat back the EPA a little.
The answer, of course, is to be more sensible in the way that the environment is regulated. No, people should not mine the Grand Canyon (at least not in any way mining is currently conducted). No, a yearly tailpipe opacity test is not an effective way of regulating diesel emissions. But unfortunately, politics turns everything into an emotional appeal that leads to both sides talking past one another. I think the best thing we can do as individuals is honestly try to be better.
Most companies are not going to go backwards because they know that a second a Democrat is in charge, they're going to be tasked with sticking to tougher regulations. They're not going to backfall after this much time and energy has been spent on the issue.
Trumpism isn't about doing what's smart, though. It's about smiting those who disagree with you and dismantling the regulatory state while strengthening the administrative state by stacking the courts so that Congress is locked out of decision making. They aren't doing it because it's the smart thing to do. They're doing it because Democrats hate it.
History will not be kind to Trump or to his followers. The coming economic shift with automation are going to eat the last of their jobs and their future. To them, as long as it makes the Left cry, its totally worth destroying everything along the way...
Ignorance is not a virtue as one cannot eat, drink or breath money.
These methane regulations are a good example. Every state that has oil & gas drilling already regulates methane emissions as part of the necessary permits. The Obama EPA enacted a rule to federalize those standards that took effect in March of 2016. It's a duplicative rule that's been operative for about five minutes.
I like Obama a lot, but on the environmental front, he was willing to spend zero political capital to achieve consensus on environmental reforms. To the contrary, he won reelection on a pro-coal and pro-fracking platform! Here is Obama criticizing Romney for standing in front of a coal plant (as Governor) and saying "this plant kills": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXRmlxBDjfE. Here is Obama talking about the how great fracking is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uVGY3sIBsA. He somehow found environmental Jesus around 2015 and rushed through a bunch of regulations at the last minute. But, as such, his successor is perfectly entitled to reverse them just as quickly and easily.