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Darren New wrote:
> Certainly all the interviewers have agendas. Part of the problem is
> that the USA already paid a whole lot of attention to pollution stuff
> like 30 years ago. We put scrubbers on all the smoke stacks, treat the
> coal before burning it, and so on. We use a lot of energy, but the
> country is spread out, large and a fairly big population.
>
> We could probably do better by reducing the amount of energy we use, but
> that's not something Kyoto is going to be able to cause to happen,
> methinks.
>
On the other hand, what we "do" do is spottier than hell some times,
like the fact that we allow sales of vehicles that would "never" pass
either safety or smog checks in Arizona, but a few hundred miles away
(or where I live, more like less than fifty), on the other side of the
California border, you would have the vehicle declared either illegal to
drive, failing to meet standards, and/or unsafe. Why? Solely because
Pheonix isn't LA, and therefor no one gives a shit if 500,000 thousand
cars produce "breathable" smog, while the same per capita population in
LA would be more like 5 million cars, and you would need a damn knife to
cut through the shit if the same poorly maintained and non-California
Smog Requirement approved cars where there.
Now, some people don't think this is a problem, but.. if 100,000 people
from surrounding states, where the laws are looser, all decide to take a
trip to the LA area for vacation as the same time, well, WTF good does
having the laws do in the first place?
Its a bit like the description Penn & Teller had about some aspects of
the Endangered Species Act. Some bird on one side of a mountain is
"endangered", because there where 10,000 of them, but now are only 5,000
of them, but on the other side of the mountain there are 10,000,000 of
the damn things, because they "prefer" to live there in the first place.
We do the same thing with "pollution". Protect the places no sane person
would want to live "because of it", from too much of it, but don't do
anything at all about all the people pumping out 5-20 times as much from
their own vehicles in some area that is "not" as polluted. Or.. At least
not until it becomes so bad that people start dying from it.
We even get that logic here, where I live, where the "increase" of a
certain type of boat, which remains running all the time when on shore,
manages to kill a few people each year, including kids, so where are
"now" strict rules saying you "can't" run them. Rules that where not in
place *until* people started to die from it, and which are still not,
apparently, sufficient to stop something that wasn't happening "at all"
5 years ago. If we hadn't had a few weeks where 1-2 people died a week,
a few years back, the ordinances would "still" not be on the beaches, or
patrols going on to keep them turned off.
In most of the US, people don't "see" an obvious problem, the "Fed"
isn't doing a damn thing, other than, often, undermining protections, or
refusing to implement ones that are what experts consider "strict
enough", and thus, most places, no one is passing local laws to deal
with it either. End result -> other than in major cities, you could
probably burn tires 24/7, and as long as some bird or lizard wasn't
"endangered" in the area by it, or the wind shifted enough to annoy the
nearest neighbor, the state wouldn't give a damn.
Or, at least that is the "common" perception that people have, when they
see the government constantly arguing for why it "shouldn't" introduce
stricter policies, and make "everyone" follow them, then a week later
hear about some morons, like the ones in Florida, who successfully
convinced the local government that swamp land produced "pollutants", so
it would be better as a parking lot.
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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