No, you can’t, because “ivory tower intellectuals writing emissions codes” is a pejorative that implies that the environmental scientists who push for those codes have no idea how the world works, when in fact they have a pretty good idea of how the world works now, and how it will work when the climate increases beyond a given average temperature. They’d rather “Bubba and Billy Bob Trucking” go out of business now than have millions if not billions of people starve, and millions of others displaced from their homes due to rising sea levels.
I’m not convinced you meant to imply that, but we really need to get away from the idea that ordinary people know as much as those who have spent years earning advanced degrees. It’s led to the climate change “debate” (which is almost entirely between politicians who at best have a JD claiming it’s not real vs people with actual doctorates in climate science saying it is), as well as problems like the rise of homeopathy as “alternative” medicine – because people think they know more than actual MDs, they practice witchcraft to keep themselves healthy.
The anti-intellectualism in our society really has to stop.
In order to believe this boils down to nothing but a political dog fight, you have to assume the worst of both sides. I think there is a very real possibility this loophole exists because those “ivory tower intellectuals” took into consideration that truck drivers need to make a living, and they know there are a lot of truck drivers out there who don’t have the skills to do any other type of job that is currently available.
Unlike shadowfax, I do care about what happens to drivers who lose their livelihoods, because in a democracy like ours, they vote, and jobless and under-employed people are easy to manipulate by stoking their fears. Leaving them out in the cold is counterproductive, because it always leads to a backlash against the party that shows them indifference.
The lack of regard for those at the bottom in our society really has to stop.
A quick suggestion here that it is the evidence/data in climate science saying it is. Too many people have knee jerk responses against scientists with doctorates.
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
― Isaac Asimov
I care what happens to them too, and if necessary environmental policy drives them out of business I entirely support job re-training and replacement assistance. But I also care what happens to them, the rest of us, and our subsequent generations, and if they are allowed to continue polluting at the levels they historically have been, all of us are going to suffer.
Or to steal from Spock, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
@bing, are you suggesting that we should abondon drug laws because so may citizens ignore them? Probably not, but I just thought I’d bring that up as an example of laws that are ignored by huge numbers of citizens.
I worked at a uranium metal refinery during production and subsequent shut-sown and clean-up. I saw many CFRs (Code of Federal Regulations) from the EPA. Here’s a crude, but typical, example: The salt (sodium chloride) in the water effluent from a tannery shall not exceed X wt%. Then, because some tanneries can’t meet this for various reasons, and apparently their effluent goes into a river where the salt content is not really an issue, there are pages of exemptions for named companies that would otherwise be shut down by this regulation. I don’t know if this applies here, but there it is.
I’m on the fence on drugs. I tend to think it’ll turn California and Colorado into a state of zombies. You do have to look at the history though. The war on drugs was pushed by the liquor industry to not bite into the profits. Funny since prohibition was such a success. But with the drug war, we have made it profitable for drug lords to do business here. So the first question is what in our culture has created the market? The Netherlands seems to handle it better than we do but then they have a high emphasis on treatment for addicts. Can you imagine the impact on Chicago crime if drugs were available in drug stores?
As far as recreational pot, which is legal in Calif as of January 2018, I doubt legalization increases the number of people who use it by very much. The folks who want it will just buy it at the stores rather than whoever they bought it from before, as long as the stores sell it for a competitive price and quality. The major downside to legalization from my way of thinking is the availability in edible form. It’s too easy for kids wanting a snack after school to find it and become ill. I think common sense should dictate that the edible form should only be available by prescription, as medical pot. Or at least purchased at a conventional drug-store from a pharmacist. Time will tell I guess.
When we were in Amsterdam in 2003, some “coffee houses” had a marijuana odor wafting out as we passed by. Other than that, we didn’t see anyone with pot or smell any, either. Everyone we interacted with seemed like regular, everyday people. I imagine some used marijuana, but it didn’t matter to me.
Vicodin and Percocet/Roxicodone/OxyContin are all prescription narcotics. That doesn’t stop kids from finding them and abusing them if parents aren’t diligent about storing them. Making recreational marijuana prescription only makes no sense at all.
I know you were. I’m just saying making them controlled like prescription narcotics won’t make a bit of difference for keeping them out of the hands of children.
Helping a friend deal with a rebellious teenager resulted in my escorting the mother for several visits and it became apparent that the rehab clinic was mostly an insurance rip off business. The friend’s son was involved with Marijuana only and the staff went to some outrageous lengths to make the situation seem much worse than it was. The clinic was being assigned juveniles from county and city courts for rehabilitation at some minimal rate which was 3 to 5 days to ‘dry out’ and then sent home while parents with insurance or deep pockets were told their kids were in desperate need of many weeks of treatment. Funny how that works out. In the end my best take on the rehabilitation was the young man became quite a jail house lawyer regarding drugs.
The trouble with the EPAs environmental scientists is that their findings get written into law by politicians and implemented and interpreted by bureaucrats. Neither group is good at envisioning unintended consequences.
This can be disastrous when applied to large industries lie auto and truck manufacturing or even water treatment plants.
Why do I mention water treatment plants? Well , when clean water laws were enacted, the regs called for removing a specified percentage of pollutants rather than an absolute standard. The water in many places in Alaska was so clean that it was impossible to remove the required percentage.
The solution was buying barges full of garbage from Seattle and taking them up the inside passage to be dumped in the water supply.
I’d love to see a citation on that. Especially since it doesn’t make sense. If you’re supposed to remove a percentage then you can do that with any water. Need to remove 50% of pollutants in water that has 1 million pollutants per unit of water? Remove 500,000 pollutants. Need to remove 50% of pollutants in water that has 2 pollutants per unit of water? Remove 1 pollutant.
And if the water is 100% pure and sterile (it’s not), you could almost literally pee in the river and then siphon out whatever percentage you needed to.
I keep hearing that nonsense as far back at the 60’s. Back in the 60’s the big 3 pushed back when they were asked to design engines that could run on lead-free gas and to pollute less. Gee…we are now driving vehicles that run on lead-free gas and pollute 100 times less. So why where they so against it? Because it would eat into there short term profits…PERIOD.
