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Comment by colinmhayes | Hacker News Reader

> let’s amend it!

Lol good luck with that. Zero chance 3/4 of the states agree on literally anything. The culture wars are in full swing, owning the other side is more important than being effective.

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The last amendment to the constitution was in 1992, so amendments aren't impossible. The story behind the 27th amendment is pretty amusing. An undergrad student wrote a paper saying that the proposed amendment was still live and could be ratified even though it had been proposed in 1789 and not passed, but got a C grade on the paper since his TA disagreed. Annoyed by this, the student started a letter-writing campaign which eventually succeeded in getting the constitutional amendment passed. Years later, his grade was changed to an A to recognize that he had been right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_th...

The political outlook has changed a lot since 92. Newt Gingrich was not yet speaker at that point, the republicans strategy of “never agree to anything democrats propose no matter what” was just getting started. I suspect passing that amendment would be much more difficult today.

Amendments to the constitution need adults in congress and the senate, not what we have today

Alternatively, a simple majority in Congress could enact the regulations that were deemed not enforceable by the EPA alone. If a majority in Congress won't authorize it, should they be enacted? I guess it depends on your level of commitment to democracy as an ideal.

A majority in congress isn’t enough to pass regulatory laws. You need 60 votes unless you’ve got 50 willing to overturn the filibuster.

How is it culture wars when one side does not want to regulate pollution?

Defining CO2 as a pollutant is a problem for me.

The topic is not defining CO2 as a pollutant.

The topic is about controlling proportions of different molecules in the environment to maintain a preferable quality of life for citizens of the world.

Before CO2, you had pollutants like NOx, which were toxic pollutants, and CFCs, which were pollutants but not toxic. CFCs were considered pollutants because they damaged the Earth in a way that would have a negative impact on human health, but non-toxic because their harm was not directly effected on the human body. CO2 would be the kind of pollutant that CFCs are. (CFCs are toxic in high concentrations, but the mechanism of their harm when released into the environment is not toxicity.)

By what possible definition is CO2 not a pollutant?

>> let’s amend it!

> Lol good luck with that. Zero chance 3/4 of the states agree on literally anything. The culture wars are in full swing, owning the other side is more important than being effective.

The problem is that a lot of people want to use amendments to force non-consensus policy preferences on the whole country. For many decades, it seems like Supreme Court decisions have frequently been serving as the constitutional amendments those people want in all but name.

You seem to think this is a both side's issue. Putin has a few bridges to sell you.

Good. If we can’t agree, then we shouldn’t do it. We are a republic. Every state should have a say.

Then we can’t do anything. Personally I don’t think never doing anything is a path to success.

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