In 1970 the smog was so bad on I-5 north of San Diego that you couldn’t see but 2 light poles ahead for the muddy air. The Big 3 fought tooth and nail to prevent the EPA from forcing them to clean their cars up.
https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/guardian-epas-formative-years-1970-1973.html
And at that time doctors were recommending Camels.
Trumpy most likely wants to build a big wall around the entire country that way there is no need to sell our cars elsewhere.
Interesting reasoning but at least you mentioned “cars”. Perhaps a little less caffeine would help.
Because the local governments were strongly incentivized to let industry do whatever it wanted. If they required tight standards, the jobs would move to Wyoming or Pennsylvania or Ohio or West Virginia, where the state didn’t require it. If there’s a national standard, enforceable by fine, then the option is fix it or leave the country altogether. In the 70’s, more corporations were national than multi-national, so it was a compelling argument.
And as mentioned, you have the “downstream” problems. Town X is choking and has water full of lead because it’s downwind from Town Y; if the state or local government is reluctant, Town X is SOL.
Flint still has dirty water; if the EPA goes, it probably will always have it.
In all fairness, Flint had lead-contaminated (not “dirty” per se) water because the town was governed by idiots, who put idiots in control of the water dept. MANY locales have lead pipes; not a problem, so long as you “know what you’re doing” with chlorination, pH, and other additives: lead will quickly “passivate” in favorable conditions, and not leach into the water supply.
OTOH, when you let Larry, Curly and Moe run things–and not have somebody “double check” water quality periodically, to save money, you get…Flint, MI.
Gotta agree with that plus don’t forget they were buying water from the dysfunctional Detroit city government at the time and needed to go alone to save money. All in all a comedy of errors. Old infrastructure, greedy suppliers, and incompetence. Lots of folks still have lead pipes and that’s OK as long as they are coated over time and the coating stays there.
But SOMEBODY has to generate NJ’s power.
Coal accounts for about 10% of NJ’s power. The rest is Natural gas and Nuclear with a little solar and wind thrown in.
Germany experience is quite an interesting one.
They are very aggressive in migrating out of nuclear and hydrocarbon generation into renewables and they accomplished quite a lot.
Trouble they came into now is that power-grid is getting close to the point when they have too much of daily-fluctuating solar and unpredictably-fluctuating wind with falling capacity to compensate for these fluctuations.
You can not really go to Tesla for PowerWall “thing” in the scale of the entire country…
Interesting to see how they gonna solve this 
Why would you assume that NJ’s electric power is generated in Ohio?
Yes, “the grid” interconnects the electrical infrastructure of the entire Northeast, but the fact remains that the electric power used in NJ is almost entirely generated in NJ–the vast majority by natural gas-fired turbines–and the remainder with nuclear power, solar panels, and coal.
A few years ago, NJ was the national leader in the number of solar panels, but growth in that sector in other states has caused NJ to fall to–I think–third place nationally in the number of solar panels. In addition to large solar panel “farms” located over some old “brown fields”, virtually every utility pole in my neck of the woods has a solar panel on it.
I knew what you meant. I am familiar with a similar saying in military aviation. Of course it concerns shorter time periods only addressing weather. “Forecast is what you expect; Observed is what you get.”
Wind and solar will never be a major source of electric power until we develop a way to stockpile the energy they produce. An economical and practical way to stockpile the energy.
Solar and wind systems must be supplemented by traditional systems, like natural gas. I suppose we should say that the natural gas turbines are primary and wind or solar are supplementary. The power company needs something that goes on line fast, and you can’t beat natural gas for that. Coal or oil systems aren’t as quick to start up.
Good evening. Could we please bring this back closer to cars? Thanks.