Odds are good that re-shored manufacturing will be cleaner than older plants built in regions with lower environmental regulation.

What has, hopefully, changed is we aren't allowing companies to store it in leaking underground tanks, etc. All these superfund sites aren't a result if business as usual, in each case there is some major, systemic, intentional oversight and frankly corruption.

Source - I've worked some in that industry designing automation for asml, applied, etc.

Not in the semiconductor industry but a good example of the kind of thing that results in a super fund site is Rocky Flats in Colorado. There is a now famous news broadcast where the representative from the department of energy is saying "there is no fire" and a big fire can be clearly seen behind them.

They were machining plutonium and uranium nuclear bomb triggers on lathes in special glove boxes with particle capture and ventilation systems that were supposed to scrub the air before venting it to atmosphere. These systems weren't properly maintained and they got clogged up with radioactive dust and caught fire. It was later found that they were dumping radioactive dust into the air, and had hundreds of barrels of radioactive waste in steel barrels that were rusted through leaking into the ground for decades. It's the only time one federal agency (the FBI) raided a facility of another federal agency (DOE).

Exhibit A: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo...

https://www.prevor.com/en/chemical-risks-in-semiconductors-i...

https://en.hesperian.org/hhg/Workers%27_Guide_to_Health_and_...

Point is - there are lots of bad chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing, even today.

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/28/1082934438/supreme-court-to-h...

Which the court knows damn well will be the outcome - that's the goal. Keep anything from being done.

We already complain all the time that legislators don't understand the stuff they pass laws about. Delegation is not authoritarianism. You haven't actually said how you'd "fix what's broken". Do you have any specific ideas?

We don't want to have one set of regulations for each party which change with the president, (we also don't want to delude ourselves into thinking our preferred party will keep winning).

You're assuming that there are "parameters" given to agencies to create regulation with the force of law and the case seems to be about the circumstances where these are not nearly direct enough.

I don't want the president to be able to run the country with executive actions, this has very much gotten out of hand.

Specific ideas involve people not watching news paid for with advertisements, changes to election funding which should be obvious (removing the idea that unlimited political contributions are "free speech"), killing the filibuster, fixing gerrymandered districts, alternatives to first-past-the-post voting, someone going out and trying to inform the electorate in a way that encourages independent thought and not just cheer-leading for ones own side, re-enforced and expanded limits on corporate media/news ownership.

Ultimately though, the electorate just has to demand it instead of letting itself get whipped up into an emotional frenzy with the ever-present latest manufactured crisis.

Like what do you think the “demanding” is going to look like if not an emotional frenzy and protests?

You find this all over and have to question about each issue that is emotionally charged... how does fanning the flames help certain parties and politicians? Likewise for news sources.

There's an incentive partially intentional by those pulling the strings and partially emergent (or a stand-alone complex for Ghost in the Shell fans) phenomenon where by in a intentional/emergent collusion between parties, politicians, media, and individuals... the most emotionally charged issues dominate the political landscape these days because from somebody seeking out the emotional rush of a like to a politician winning elections to corporate news advertisement sales there are benefits everywhere to make people frenzy about something, and whatever is most apt for it gets it, regardless if rationally it's a solved issue that only a few hangers on really want to fight about any more.

>Like what do you think the “demanding” is going to look like if not an emotional frenzy and protests?

There's a real core of the problem, inability to imagine what meaningful political discourse would look like without an emotional frenzy.

> it would just be solved

You can’t say “god why are we still taking about this, can’t we just do the_thing_i_want and call it a day?” Because obviously there would be a lot less political strife if we all just agreed or put up with outcomes we don’t like.

  > Fix what’s broken

Enlighten us, how manufacturing 'silicone' has become less chemical intensive.

I don't know what the Chinese fabs do, so I have no idea if pump their waste out into the environment.

You would think that dissolved copper would have some recovery value, given the price of copper.

I am reminded of the waste from silver halide photographic processing, which at one point was just dumped into rivers (an unfortunate amount went into the Great Lakes); when the price of silver increased, suddenly it became worthwhile to recover the silver rather than let it go down the literal drain.

A good proper justification of the claim from the claimant or supporters of that argument is useful.

"silicon" is the chemical element number 14, and this name, which is used in the English-speaking countries, was coined by someone who believed that it is a good idea for it to rhyme with "carbon" (actually a bad idea in my opinion)

"silicone" is the generic name for a class of plastics, i.e. the polymers with a poly-siloxane structure. This name was coined by someone who believed that it is a good idea for it to rhyme with "acetone", because he erroneously believed that these polymers have a structure similar to ketones.

But generally those chemical engineers are pretty good at cleaning up the processes (it cheaper, also cheaper to ship manufacturing overseas…)

The Resource Conservation and Recovery act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Conservation_and_Re...

And toxic substance control acts seemed to rules of note.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_Substances_Control_Act...

GE silicones [1]https://www.epa.gov/hwcorrectiveactionsites/hazardous-waste-...

Some of this improvement came naturally, as the requirement for cleaner and cleaner manufacturing environment for the wafers themselves (to keep particulate contamination from lowering yield) meant that the chemicals were kept in enclosed systems, thus easier to keep from leaking out.

Some of this came about because, from what I was told by "old timers", in the 60's and 70's part of the problem was that fabs were not thought of as being very dangerous. This sounds incredible now, but the risks people thought of from manufacturing then were those present in steel mills, coal mines, auto factories, etc. Big heavy things and molten steel and roofs that can collapse on you; physically obvious risks. It took some time to realize that semiconductor fabs were just as dangerous; no doubt longer than it should have, but the realization did arrive in time.

I left the semiconductor industry because it was outsourcing, not because of concerns for my safety; in new fabs, there was a great emphasis on safety and the environmental impact (which no doubt raised costs relative to some of the other places that manufacturing shifted to).