> It’s very hard to understand why the current administration has such an urge to roll back environmental regulations.
No, it's very easy. Environmental regulations cost money. Lots of money. It's much more profitable to keep these externalities.
No, it's very easy. Environmental regulations cost money. Lots of money. It's much more profitable to keep these externalities.
Repealing regulations (not necessarily environmental ones) was popular enough to be a Trump campaign promise, after all.
- Piles of money for military and FBI projects in the same bill
- Despite there being 5 unemployed for every free job not wanting to pay people so much that they will incentivized not to work
- Not waiting to provide additional funds to states to deal with the current crisis
That’s a narrow-minded view. Sure, environmental regulations cost oil and gas companies money.
But this fails to consider the external costs to society: increased healthcare costs and reduced life expectancy due to air and water pollution, future costs of global heating including property damage to coastal cities from rising sea levels, agricultural regions becoming less productive, etc.
Secondly, reducing dependence on fossil fuels (many of which are imported, even in America) will improve energy security and reduce energy costs in the long term. Great economic benefits, as well as environmental ones.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
Or should they consider these against long-term costs incurred by everyone? Surely there is a middle ground that works for everyone. It’s not as if major oil companies are struggling to survive.
We don't live in a world where we get to speculate on what the intended role of government ought to be.
It's a winning strategy. Not only in the US, but across most of the Anglo sphere. As an added bonus it provides huge payoffs to billionaires at the cost of the poor and middle class.
Not in the UK. Coal use has plummeted by 84% in 5 years (84 million tonnes in 2014 to 8 million tonnes in 2019), while renewable energy has been hugely expanded. All under “right wing” (Conservative) governments.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/09/is-this-...
And their target demographic isn't too interested in facts, so they'll never learn the reality that it was deregulation lead to a natural gas boom, which lead to the free market dealing the death blow to coal. So they can keep selling evil job killing regulations as the reason for the decline of everything great in this country.
Renewables get the headlines, but those coal plants are mostly being replaced with natural gas ones. The media reports "renewables overtake coal for the first time," which gives the false impression that solar and wind are displacing coal. But that's not what's really happening, which is that those former coal plants now burn natural gas because it's cheaper.
Not true in the UK. Natural gas use has also declined, albeit only slightly, in recent years. There has also been a net loss of capacity in the past decade as more old NG plants have closed than new ones built.
Meanwhile, coal, which produced 42% of all UK electricity as recently as 2012, has almost gone to zero while renewables (the bulk of which is offshore wind) are at 37% - and growing every year.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Natural-Gas-Has-Replaced-Ov...
And guess who is making donations, hiring nephews, and making up parts of portfolios. What the parent was saying is that externalities don't matter to these people because we don't value externalities as a society.
Once it's personal, and they can't buy their way out then improvements can be maintained.
Better yet, they and their spouses and children.
I don't think that's the whole story. You also have Zombie Reaganism, which has the Republicans reflexively aping 80s policy as the response to everything, even though it's not the 80s anymore.
I agree that it is apparently a bonding exercise among certain capital-crowds to dismantle and mock environmental protections. The real world works like that.
I meant like literally. Where does the money that is spent meeting environmental regulations go? The money is not just being burnt up. It's going to a different segment of the economy, I'm just not versed in what that means or looks like.
Anyway, that money is generally spent on equipment and processes to clean up after whatever the company is doing. Collection pods for contaminated water. Scrubbers on chimneys. Direct pay to inspectors to come out and make sure you aren't trying to cheat to save money. That sort of thing. It spreads out across the entire economy. Markets and industries are formed to support finding the cheapest way to keep the processes in question from damaging the environment and requiring much more expensive cleanup (think EPA superfund and class action lawsuits over medical conditions suffered by nearby communities) after the fact.
Why can't Democrats get that message across?
The EPA is rightfully tired of cleaning up industry messes and would much prefer that the pollution not happen in the first place. It's much easier and cheaper to clean up that way.
So these regulations are all about preventing companies from passing on the costs of cleanup to the general public. One way or another you're paying for it, and it's much less expensive in almost every case if you pay for it up front. The only problem is that the free market doesn't price in externalities unless you force it to (via regulation) so the pollute now and let the public clean it up later approach is always going to win in an unregulated market.