[The Fog That Killed 12,000 People] (Viewer #312,517)
As libertarian as I am, I still can’t come up with a good argument against environmental regulations in the face of this problem, and that bothers me.
I hate it when I can’t make government the bad guy in a situation where innocent people are killed.
Some environmental protections are necessary.
The fact that some environmental protections are necessary is an argument against having too many protections.
The* reason: Once you have too many regulations to enforce consistently, you have to start handing out exceptions or ignore them altogether — which makes it exceedingly difficult to make sure that the necessary regulations are still followed. The more non-necessary regulations you have, the more likely it is you’ll have too many to enforce consistently.
* Well, I said “the”, but it’s just “a” reason; there are others too.
Where the heck was Sherlock Holmes when they really needed him? smh
Elementary Cliff…he was out on the moors with a can of Alpo searching for the Hound of the Baskervilles!
Elementary my dear Cliff…he was out on the moors searching for the Hound of the Baskervilles.
No environmental regulations are needed. All you have to do is enforce property rights. If your neighbor threw his trash on your lawn instead of in his trash can, you’d expect him to clean it up (or pay someone else to), right? It doesn’t matter if your neighbor is some guy in a house, or a paper mill. As soon as the waste products of the paper mill leave their property, you make them pay to clean it up, UNLESS it’s leaving the property in some form of transportation and being taken to a storage location where it can be safely stored (trash dump).
“… If your neighbor threw his trash on your lawn instead of in his trash can, you’d expect him to clean it up”
The problem becomes too many people wanting the Government to do something proactive to prevent the neighbor from throwing the trash on your lawn.
Which swings back around to the people who answer questions with “more Government” not understanding the question in the first place.
Nor should you. I’m a Conservative and I’m all for environmentalism. Not stupid pointless nonsense like recycling my sandals, mind you – but I think if there are viable technologies that will be less harmful to the environment, great!
With the caveat that I expect them to be privately researched by someone looking to profit from them; and consumer affordable. Otherwise, cost/benefit baby.
And in the meantime, we have to recognize a simple reality: this country runs on energy. And, right now, that means burning fossil fuels. That’s a reality. I hope we can change it, but right now we can’t. So, we have to just do the best we can with what we’ve got, until some capitalist finds it worthwhile to produce something better.
This is, incidentally, why I say that the EPA shouldn’t exist – it should instead be a sub-division of the Dept. of Energy. Primary goal: produce energy; Secondary goal: minimize environmental impact.