During the 1960’s, environmentalists like myself bragged about our success stories cleaning up America’s rivers. Now the EPA is doing the exact opposite. On the same week they laid out their plan to destroy America’s energy infrastructure and vast tracts of land with “green energy” – they destroyed the Colorado River Basin
h/t Dave Stealey
The Environmental Protection Agency is no longer protecting the environment – rather they are destroying it. That is why they need to be terminated.
in that , what was a lovely landscape, now sits a road system and 28,000 tons of concrete supporting about 35 wind turbines.
Each state has its own EPA, so states should form a consortium to fix environmental issues that involve any two states in the group. All other matters should be done by state EPA.
Unfortunately, even the state EPA’s have systemic problems.
My suggestion, shut it all down and start again anew. Rebuild the entire bureaucratic system behind it all. Build in policy and procedural safeguards that put heavy limits and restrictions upon the agency itself and only allow it to perform its given functions through expressed permissions, giving the “people” the control over what is regulated and how. Build in legal barriers that the agency cannot, under any circumstances, cross. These sorts of agencies, all of them, must have concrete boundaries defined such that they cannot cross under any circumstances. The original intention of the EPA (DOE, Dep of Ed, and the rest of the alphabets) was passed by a long time ago, and everything since has been a gross overreach and violation of their boundaries. None of these agencies (on a Federal level) have Constitutional authority to do any of the things that they are doing.
Tony, I’ll have to assume, based on your past comments, that you are not arguing for a return to the environmental policies of the 1950s and prior, in which industry was allowed to do pretty much whatever they wanted to with our environment.
On its face your argument in this post seems to suggest that that would be better than the status quo, but knowing your past statements as well as I do, I can’t believe that that’s what you really meant. So I’ll assume that the apparent suggestion was an unintended consequence of having to be brief.
For the record, I know from firsthand observation that my local air, water, and soil are in much better shape overall because of existing environmental policy. Is it optimal — of course not. Far from it. (How are we going to get that with the levels of population density that we have around here?) But I don’t believe we’ve come far enough that industry can be trusted to simply self-regulate their environmental impacts. Again, I can’t and don’t believe that that’s what you meant to suggest.
Do I believe that EPA should be restricting CO2 or classifying it as a pollutant or requiring windmill construction or shutting down coal plants because of carbon footprint? No, and I’ve already been clear about that. But the agency does not have to be terminated in order to put a stop to these things.
Regarding the mine incident, I’d point out that there was already runoff happening, but they choked it off for a time, which caused an increase in water quality before the catastrophic failure. So over the long run, I don’t accept that the overall amount of pollution in that river is worse with the EPA than without. I think the EPA (granted that they do a lot of evil things to choke off economic prosperity and usher in Communism, and these things should be stopped) genuinely wants clean water and is generally giving us cleaner water than we would have without them.
So I’ll reiterate from my comment that apparently prompted this post: for the optimum environmental results, clip their wings heavily, and do a wholesale replacement of management, and eliminate their unlawful powers. But do not terminate their lawful jurisdiction over air, water, and soil quality. These things are too important to let lapse, even temporarily. Take them away even briefly, and what we will see from industry will make this look like nothing. This is not groundbreaking stuff, it’s called the tragedy of the commons, and it will be multiplied by the fact that the economy is so bad and industry will sense an opportunity to get back on a stable footing by putting all environmental priorities on the back burner. The entirely predictable result will be record pollution levels in our environment, for which your policy of “EPA termination” will be directly and solely responsible. So I call on you now to clarify your position, since I can’t believe that that’s the policy you really mean to advocate, despite appearances.
– Richard
You’re assuming these are normal times, where there are normal administrative agencies with normal Americans working in them. Not true. Think Lois Lerner, Lisa Jackson, etc., etc. Has their behavior been normal? An earlier posting on the Colorado River disaster made a telling point – that the EPA officials didn’t bother contacting state representatives, not even governors, while the disaster was happening. This looks like Ruling Class behavior to me, essentially disdaining to bother contacting the peasants – not normal at all.
No, I am not assuming that!
I frequently write that these things need to be reformed, and I’ve done so here.
All I argued was that reforming these things is not the same as eliminating the U.S. government’s jurisdiction over the environment.
Get rid of the EPA people who were involved in this, prosecute them, and claw back their pay. It’s very simple. But there are people who don’t want environmental regulation, and they are at least as much of a problem to the environment as the EPA is.
EPA and their total destruction of all property rights through the Clean Water Act.
http://cowboybyte.com/40174/maps-show-massive-increase-in-epa-authority-regulatory-uncertainty-for-everyone-else/
People who make color charts (like when you are buying paint) have special names for colors like “Butterfly Blue” or “Antique White”
So now we can add “EPA Yellow” to the list of well known colors.