Prior to the passage of the Clean Air Act, the US had some serious air pollution problems. This is what LA looked like in 1948.
There were many days when you could hardly see across the Grand Canyon, because of smoke from coal fired power plants. Government solved those problems through regulations passed in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
Unfortunately, those same government agencies have outlived their usefulness, and are now regulating imaginary pollution. The EPA is obsessed with CO2, which is not a pollutant.
The EPA needs to be defunded, because they are now hurting America rather than helping. Much of the Federal government has become a malignacy, which exists only for its own benefit.
The ratchet effect of government has far exceeded the usefulness of the EPA. It is an agency that just needs to be CANCELED in its entirety and CFR Section 40 needs to be deleted. If Congress was able to function at all they have already done that.
All federal agencies and bureaus need to have their charters/creation docs incorporate ‘sunset provisions’, after which date they no longer exist … save for perhaps the Armed Forces …
Re-hire ALL personnel from scratch, dissolving EVERY fiefdom that built-up within those bureaus during the term for which that org had existed in the now-expired term. That will; can a LOT of ‘lifers’ …
It is human nature to swing too far in implementing an action to correct a situation.
Consider the zero tolerance law now being enforced in schools:
A student accidentally leaves a work tool, a type of knife, in view in the students car,
A Responsible student, working to help support a family, But with zero tolerance the student is suspended from school for the rest of the school year.
A central problem is that of taking responsibility away from local authority and giving it to a central government. The same story with different recipes could be told again and again.
It is a process of becoming a totalitarian government, the antithesis of the vision of the US forefathers.
The problem is in the approach. It was never approached in terms of property rights. It started with government disregarding property rights and going with a ‘prove harm’ model. When harm was proven government became the arbiter of what and how much spewed by whom was harm. Oddly government often uses this power for itself and its friends rather than the people. And government aims to expand, which is why the EPA is as it is now.
Had a property rights model been chosen most pollution would have been nipped in the bud. All the stuff that was dumped simply because the water was a commons or because polluters’ neighbors couldn’t prove it was harmful would have been gone instantly. More complex issues like air pollution from combustion would have still taken standards, but effective standards are done in variety of ways, not always by government.
They’re after ‘ozone pre-cursors’ now. That’d be oxygen to you and me.
In government, those who fail get a larger budget so they can try harder next time. Those succeed get a larger budget so they can go find new “problems” to fix.
And those who fail, always blame it on insufficient funds. And thus the failure is always rewarded with more money. Then they proceed to spend the additional funds with no results and repeat the process.
When was the last time you heard of a government department or ministry being abolished and disbanded due to abject failure?
With no penalty for failure, you get more of what government rewards.
Thus, nothing fails like government.
The EPA and its leadership should be brought up on charges of reckless endangerment for trying reduce our access to an atmospheric gas that sustains all life on earth.
We should be honoring, not punishing, those industries emitting the most CO2 with a special “Nurturing Life Award.”
If we truly want to boost world crop yields and stamp out famine, we should exhale more often, drive gas guzzlers and burn coal and natural gas until the cows come home. Why? Because higher CO2 levels stimulate plant growth.
Compared to past geological periods, today’s Earth is CO2 starved. Agricultural production would benefit greatly from CO2 levels in the 3,000 ppm to 4,000 ppm range (by comparison, crowded auditoriums see 7,000 ppm levels). Declaring war on CO2, a minuscule, but life-giving, atmospheric element, is worse than irresponsible; it’s criminal.
There is absolutely zero evidence in the ice core record to support the theory of CO2-induced warming. In fact, we see just the opposite: C02 levels rise in response to warming, as oceans warm and CO2 loses its solubility and escapes, or out-gasses, into the atmosphere.
Today’s “save the world” speech by Obama was a compendium of misinformation and lies that, as usual, was mainlined into every ‘American household by his fawning lackeys in the lamestream media. The presstitutes never challenged a word from the Great Prevaricator.
Obama’s wish: That we were all chickens and he was the only hypnotist wielding a stopwatch on the planet …
Not going to happen.
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The government did not solve the problem. The power companies solved the problem. The engineers solved the problem. NOT bureaucrats! Actually most of the problems were already on the way to being solved or they would not have solved in a timely way. The government may have prodded them along slightly but it would have been better for all of us if they had solved the problem on their own. The idea that no one does good unless the government shows up with a gun is foolishness.
The power companies resisted, until they were forced to clean up by the government.