Environment What do we make of changes we’ve made to improve the environment?

There are a few of us who remember the 50’s and 60’s before the environmental movement got going. We had leaded gas, no emissions limits, few wastewater and chemical dumping limits. There was a yellow/orange pall in the sky over Baton Rouge. Lake Pnchartrain was dying due to Shell dredging and effluent from uncontrolled sewer runoff on the north shore. Smog from refineries, steel mills, power plants etc enveloped cities across the country. Ground water was contaminated and threatened by uncontrolled waste injection wells (I can tell you a couple of horror stories about Ethyl in BR).

In the 70’s the EPA came in and mandated major changes in all the areas I mentioned above. The results are the air and water are cleaner than they have been in 100+ years. I can give you the litany but you know it. Enviormentally we’re so much better off and our country is healthier in every way.

This didn’t come without costs however as nothing is free. Companies, cities, states and the USA spent is still spending billions maybe trillions of dollars on this clean up. Much of that money was spent on things that had no addition to corporate profits or capital spending to improve and increase production. Frankly this cost us in jobs and better wages. It took our collective eyes off being more competitive and winning the international battle for economic leadership. Worst of all it gave the federal government more power over our lives. They can come in to your private property and stop you from improving it in the name of the environment. They’re continuing to enforce stricter and stricter laws. Are these new laws necessary? Are they good? Can they be stopped?

I think that in the balance we’re much better off for what has been done. I’ve been deeply involved in the process and results as I sell electrical equipment to all the companies up and down the river. I’ve seen what they had to do, and still have to. I’ve seen the impact on capital improvements canceled because of environmental regulations. I also go into those plants feeling much safer and better about the air I breathe in and around them.

I’d like input from you all, especially @Kikicaca as he’s old enough to remember clearly and he’s fighting the climate change issue. This isn’t about climate change on the macro scale but our local environment. What say you?

 

I find nothing wrong with your post. We all want clean water, air and want to preserve some of the wild areas of our nation. In the early 70's I was part of the Save the Atchafalaya Basin movement. This was conservation not enviromentalism to me and there is a big difference in the two. The government through the Corp of Engineers were proposing to deepen the Atchafalaya River which would have dried up the beautiful swamps, bayous and backwaters. In my view the Atchafalaya is part of the character and landscape of Louisiana. It's Cajun it's Louisiana it's a big part of what makes Louisiana unique. It needed to be saved for future generations.

Environmentalism and the climate change movement are a danger to our nation and are used as tools to "fundamentally transform our nation". I used that term on purpose.

 

I am glad we have taken measures to improve the environment, but I don't see a lot of things better than they used to be. Things seem about the same, meaning, of course, they did not get worse, which is a victory into itself.

I am terribly concerned about the acceleration in global warming. The weather patterns have changed and they have done so pretty fast. I was commenting the other day, that back in my youth, the grass would be gray and dormant by early August but the last several years we have had tons of rain, and we are cutting more than once a week. When I was a kid, I would not have been able to deal with all that, since I had to cut grass in our huge yard. The differences in moisture in Cali is on the news nightly.

One thing I have seen is that we, in NC, are removing right many dams, and thus opening up moving water much further up into the piedmont. No one is going to get a lot out of this, but we have restored natural range to a number of species by removing the artificial blockages to flowing rivers.

When in Iowa it was clear that littering was dying out, but upon moving back to NC, the road sides are as trashy as ever. Its a shame, but was noticeable immediately upon our return. I wont lie, toting those empy cans and bottles back to the store for refund of deposit is a pain in the ass, but the impact is stark.

I watch a lot of bicycle racing. The big races in Italy, France, and Spain, as well as some of the one day "classics." I like the scenery, which is usually superior. What gets me are the HUGE windmills that are frequently in the background in some of the overhead shots. So many, just randomly around the bike courses, and yet, we have so few in the US. The difference is striking.

 

I agree that there is a core of radical socialists using environmental politics to endanger us, yet that has been a spector raised by people fighting any enviormental regulation. So where is the line drawn? How do we determine what is truly needed versus a political rat hole or political takeover?

 

The fundamental mistake you are making is your view of time. Earths time and humans concept of time are vastly different. Earth has been here 4.5 billion years vs how long mankind has been on earth what maybe 200,000 years?. Now tell me how long have we been advanced enough to truly measure earths temp. Your time on earth in geologic earth time is hardly measurable and is insignificant. You talk about how things were back in your youth. How long ago was that? 10, 20, 30 40 years ago? Do you realize how miniscule a period of time that is?

Do you realize it was much warmer during the time of the Roman Empire or the Climate Optimum? Do you know it was warmer from roughly from the year 1000AD to 1300AD? Although that seems like a long time ago it's is a blink of the eye in earth time.

Lastly the earth is in a cooling period if you look at it on a global scale.

 

BTW Spains wind energy experiment you touted has failed.

https://stopthesethings.com/2014/06/02/spains-renewable-energy-disaster-draws-to-a-close/

 

HWR you’ve missed a lot. NC and the surrounding area has power supplied by coal fired plants. The particulate, NOX and SOX reductions mandated have made vast improvements to the air quality. You can’t have windmills without reliable predictable wind. In your area it’s the offshore Atlantic and the economics are sketchy right now.
As to the removal of dams I understand but do you know many of those dams supply clean power? In some areas they are regretting the removal because of that.
As you should know I differ with Kaka about global warming BUT the doomsday scenario broadcast by the environmental socialists is nothing but propaganda. Do you know the 1930s were hotter and dryer than current times? Remember the dust bowl? Between the vastly increased population in Cali expanding into wild areas, the use of groundwater robbing nature of it and the crazy refusal of so called enviormentalists to allow removal of trash wood and controlled burns to reduce the fuel available it’s a wonder the fires aren’t worse. This is a locally man made issue not global warming.
I bet everyone agrees on the littering issue. Who volunteers when they have the various clean up days in your area?

 

Not going to be too wordy with this post. Below is the data from the Vostok Ice Cores. Date gathered not by oil companies but by scientist from ten nations. Look at it and tell what caused the temperature variatios over that 450,000 year snapshot.

 

I vowed some time ago not to engage Kaka about climate change. Futile. Waste of time. He approaches the issue with his mental acumen, data and experiences and I with mine. I am happy to disagree and let it go, but continue dialogue on other topics. But I’m also not going to let the absolute certainty of an “verbal” attack from Kaka intimidate me from participating in threads of interest, either.

I must have stated my position poorly. I can’t point to what used to be smog and is now clear. I can’t point to rivers that used to catch fire, but now don’t. I did not live in those areas. Not much has been accomplished to improve the Neuse River which suffers from pollution caused by hog and turkey farms. In fact, today’s headlines in the Raleigh paper indicate the GOP statehouse has passed laws to restrict neighbors from complaining about the agricultural pollution. Doesn’t sound like smaller government to me, but what do I know.

Our local government recently denied a permit for solar based on noise pollution. Yes you read that correctly. And eastern NC is very windy, but we can’t put up wind fields due to low flight by our military aircraft. Yes, those are the real reasons provided. Goes without saying should we find ourselves in a shooting war in Europe, all those wind turbines are gonna be there, like it or not.

 

Over regulation is due, in most part to lawsuits brought on by ambalance chasers. We have made corporate safety and health so transparent that there is a new level of ambalance chaser forcing corporations to over regulate even further. It's job security and I love it, but it can be a total pain in the ass demonstrating compliance, even if you are cleaner than the conditions that are imposed on you.