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Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

The part that I don’t understand is that just about everyone involved with the current administration, as well as many of those who voted for it, are old enough to remember. I’m certainly old enough to remember a smoggy L. A., a dead Lake Erie with rotting, dead fish on the shore, and companies that just dumped their toxic shit wherever they liked. The pictures just don’t it justice, especially that it was just everywhere you went in comparison today. And yet despite being old enough to remember, those responsible for current policy, and those that vote for them, want to return to those times. I just...don’t...get it.

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It's not just the current administration. One of the first things the Bush administration did was to allow more arsenic in drinking water[1]:

> EPA Administrator Christie Whitman on Tuesday rescinded a Clinton administration decision that would have significantly reduced the amount of arsenic allowed in the nation's drinking water.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2001/mar/21/news/mn-44369

Perhaps you missed this:

  The Clinton standard, which *would have gone into effect* at the end of the week

In other words, Clinton implemented no improvement in 8 years in office, then stuck the G.W. Bush Administration with the problem and expense.

This was just one of hundreds of lame-duck rule changes he made as political payoffs only at the last 3 weeks of his 8-year Presidency.

"those responsible for current policy, and those that vote for them, want to return to those times."

I bet those responsible all have big, nice houses in beautiful places where factories and mines and far far away and big coal/gas/oil companies help them to keep it this way. Those who vote for such policies are desperate (or stupid) enough to believe that this "will bring back jobs".

> I just...don’t...get it.

I'll take it a step further and wonder why the whole world isn't on board with the idea of protecting what we have? It makes me very sad that we don't treat our planet with respect.

If you don't care about LA or Lake Erie, you are able to profit from things that negatively impact them, and you don't care about what happens to the world after you are dead, then it makes perfect sense

They want to make money, period.

> want to return to those times

Do they? Or do they want to reduce some of the more obscure, less clearly useful regulations?

Have you heard any advocacy for say, removing catalytic converters from cars?

The most common thing I've heard is states rights, and not having this be a Federal thing, which isn't really about pollution.

>Do they?

Trump did run pandering to conservative wishes to defund the EPA. Trump won and is defunding the EPA. So yes.

> Or do they want to reduce some of the more obscure, less clearly useful regulations?

So obscure they involve the primary budget for the office and the main regulations enacted by them during Obama's time.

>Have you heard any advocacy for say, removing catalytic converters from cars?

Yes. Spend time around car culture and you’ll see there are tons of people who advocate for the removal of catalytic converters and a drastic reduction in emission (and safety) standards. There are people proud to roll coal.

Also “states’ rights” arguments are almost always code for something else. The SR argument is never about the finer points of federalism.

you mean corporations rights to "influence" state government much more cheaply than the federal government.

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