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Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

That honestly completely insane that the legal process makes up for the vast majority of time in infrastructure projects like this. I'm all for environmental concerns, taking in complaint from future neighbors, all that stuff, but allowing it to drag out important projects years is problematic.

Sometimes I feel like listing to possible complains from people living around affected areas is a waste of time. Denmark pretty much can't build windmills anymore, because they will: "Ruin my view". Seriously, the city I live in wants to close a coal fired power plant, and replace it with a number of windmills, on the same plot of land, but no, that will ruin someones view (which is currently a power plant). You also can't do cell phone towers, because they are ugly (fair enough), yet you still allow yourself to complain about poor coverage in the same area.

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On the one hand: I agree that years of delay are pretty wasteful, considering a lot of projects are really needed to solve urgent problems. With windmills, the same thing happened in my village, which was all up in arms against them. On the other hand, democracy is inherently slow and wasteful, if you want to protect also the rights of the minority, that will have a cost.

What if it isn't something like windmills that clearly are a net improvement for society over coal, and the objections aren't merely 'not a nice view'? For example, suppose some big corp wants to frack the environment to pieces for big bucks, leaving a poisoned, nearly unlivable habitat for the nearby village.

How can we safeguard against this, in a way that the village inhabitants can protest against such threats with real teeth, without grinding everything to a halt that is a mere nuisance but offers real benefits to society?

Democracy is not inherently slow and wasteful, as you see here Germany created this large project in short order. They did not abandon democracy to achieve it.

The key is that the "environmentalists", politicians, judiciary, activists, and people who would block the process were threatened with feeling the pain of the missing infrastructure. Amazing how quickly they abandon their high horses when it looks like it will cost them something, then it's full throttle with construction and fossil fuels. They like to be "all in this together" when they're inflicting this kind of pain on others though, so what seems to be inherent is people's desire to wield power and authority over others.

Classic. People not wanting multinationals fracking their land or building new gas and oil plants is "snooty environmentalists on their high horses on a power trip"

Small, committed groups are often highly influential in democracies on certain topics - whether median people want something or not can be a bit different.

Those people are quite snooty when they block reasonable exploration, production, and transport in their own countries, while still driving cars, using A/C, and expecting affordable energy, which inevitably comes from buying petroleum products from Venezuela, Russia, and the Middle East.

They cripple their own nation’s energy independence for virtue points. None of these people make real sacrifices.

People living in unimaginable wealth and comfort on the back of environmental exploitation including in large part petroleum extraction and burning, want to pull the ladder up after them to prevent others having those same advantages, to keep their position in the status quo. Yep.

I'm not talking about actual environmentalists who practice what they preach and I am in awe of and have great respect for. Those people are few and far between though, you almost can't find one these days since their noble movement has been absolutely swamped and taken over by grifters, limousine liberals, politicians, the wealthy, and the ruling class. Hence why I put "environmentalists" in quotes.

This is Hacker News, a social network for people who fetishize Ayn Rand, after all.

You're building a narrative out of thin air. The German government has removed consultation periods that go very slowly compared to pouring concrete. They haven't threatened anyone with anything. No one is prevented, through an economic threat, from testifying against the project.

No one can testify at this point. The necessary steps are skipped.

What is the narrative you believe I am building out of thin air?

The thin-air narrative I destroyed was that democracy is inherently slow and wasteful. It's not, unless you are going to argue that democracy was somehow suspended, or that this project is still slow and wasteful due to democracy.

One simple solution is to allow anything, with no delay, but then do the same legal process as before, and if the environmentalist wins, then the builders have to pay compensation.

Builders would make a loss on projects that caused lots of environmental harm, so wouldn't build in the first place.

Effectively, instead of having a judge slowly make the decision, the company tries to guess what decision the judge will make, and if they guess wrong then they're gonna lose out financially.

That would just mean you can't build because the risk is too high. "Okay, so you've built infrastructure that enabled tens of thousands of households to have electricity and heat. On the other hand, you've destroyed the habitat of some bird that had to move 400m to the east. Sorry, you shouldn't have built it, please pay 300mn euros to this NGO."

Nobody will dare to invest into anything.

or they just go bankrupt and continue under another legal entity ;)

Opens the door to bribing judges and corrupting the process.

Wasn't that door already open?

Compensation doesn't undo the damage.

>Builders would make a loss on projects that caused lots of environmental harm, so wouldn't build in the first place.

I doubt that. They would create companies for removing forrests and after they lost in court they would file bankruptcy.

The damage is done and the compensation is void. And even if they pay, money doesn't consume carbon dioxide.

A few hundred billion dollars (or euros) does buy a lot of CO2 scrubbing and environmental remediation though.

Though this would effectively mean only a few companies who can afford hundreds of billions in surety bonds can risk building anything big.

This is how it's done in the third world. They do this in Turkiey a lot. First they build, then they pay a fine. Sometimes they have to knock down the entire building, or take 3-4 floors off, if they don't' offer to pay a fine big enough to the taste of the judge. Really, almost everywhere in the Balkans/Trayka/Middle-East runs this way.

Of course, real estate is the only profitable industry in Turkiye, environment, safety regulations, and human rights be damned.

First point, things should first be regulated by actual laws - not random complaints voiced after said action is taking place. If fracking is legal, it's legal. If it isn't then it isn't.

Second it's very simple. For any kind of property right people care about, allow it to be bought and sold. In most places, the property owner owns the air space up to a certain height. This should mean that "views" are irrelevant since they were never owned.

If a place is so wealthy that they are more concerned about aesthetics over functional improvements; energy from fracking, housing for workers, etc. then let them buy them but the rights to compensate everyone else.

Law is already very complex, and the permitting/approval process extends that to specific sites, cases, situations, and necessarily involves a lot of regional and local executive branch politics. (Which can be good and bad. Eg. an industrial region has a lot more expertise, real knowledge, folks who know the subtleties, companies that can do the site survey, the impact assessments, the planning, etc. And a different region might be a big national park, where they focus on that. Both legal. Great.)

It's impossible for statutes to optimally declare priorities for everything upfront.

And a war is the unfortunate vis maior that can lead to having to build a pipe through the park.

The US code is far bigger then what any single person can fully comprehend. This likely holds true for Denmark and the EU if you add up all laws in force.

So it's likely impossible to determine if a complex activity, like fracking in a specific location, is fully legal without years of ground work.

No "single person" is trying to determine if fracking in a specific location is legal, right? That's the domain of large companies with large staffs who are well familiarized with all of the regulations, isn't it?

The large staffs you speak of are made of individual people. They can't mind meld.

> You also can't do cell phone towers, because they are ugly (fair enough)

You can disguise cell phone towers[0]. It hurts cell phone company profits though, so they'll only do that if the cost of the cheap ugly tower is more due to objections.

[0] https://twistedsifter.com/2012/08/examples-of-cell-phone-tow...

Looking at those example makes me think that Jesus really loves cell phone towers.

The disguises are pretty cool, and a really good option. My objection is when people complain that they have poor coverage in the area where they live. They want the phone companies to fix it, but only on their terms. There have been examples where cell phones companies have offered to put up towers in areas where people complained, then the same people turn around and demand the most expensive solution. That sort of behavior takes a certain type of self-centered people to pull off.

Windmills are rather hard to disguise and if you think they're ugly then sure, it's going suck having them placed in view. I happen to think they look great, so I'm less affected. What I don't understand is the sense of entitlement. People will rather have everyone else pay more for power, or keep coal power plants running, than lose money of their holiday home. Seriously, we've seen windmill parks 15km out to sea blocked, because someone believe it would mean that their holiday home would, in theory, lose $20.000 in value (Out of $325.000).

Totally agree. Legal obstacles to new infrastructure are probably the largest factor delaying cleantech projects: https://twitter.com/JohnArnoldFndtn/status/15852521617218805...

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-big-nepa-roundup

>If anything, NEPA likely stifles newer, environmentally-friendly industries more than older incumbents, which have had many years to work the process in their favor. 42% of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) active NEPA projects are related to clean energy, transmission or conservation, while only 15% are related to fossil fuels. Based on available data, offshore wind offers one of the starkest examples: The U.S. has 42 MW of offshore wind production that is operational, 932 MW under construction, and 18,581 MW bogged down in permitting, most of which are waiting on NEPA analyses to be completed. The climate crisis requires a rapid build-out of clean energy infrastructure but current NEPA permitting processes enforce the status quo, benefiting the fossil fuel industry.

It's really a tragedy that this was originally intended as legislation to benefit the environment

> That honestly completely insane that the legal process makes up for the vast majority of time in infrastructure projects like this.

This time is usually necessary to improve the quality of the projects. It is for a reason that this procedures exist. In the past and still today, we are destroying the environment, endangering people's health and reducing their quality of life through hasty decisions. Therefore citizens have decided to enact planning laws to improve the situation. Of course, the duration of planning periods are a cost factor, but one needs to find a sweet spot between them and the (not only financial) cost of projects going awry.

And remember that it were the Greens under Vice-Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck which were primarily in charge for the fast implementation of the LNG terminal.

If the complaints turn out to be valid, you’d have to undo the infrastructure work and restore the prior state, which sometimes is impossible, and in most cases cost-prohibitive. So what you’re saying is that either there are no valid complaints, or you’ll be dismissing any valid complaints.

Pretty much every large-scale renewables project in Germany is blocked by this bullshit. I don't believe in environmentalists anymore. They're the biggest blockers to actual progress in combating things like climate change.

Isn't the problem just that the term is being used inappropriately?

Facts dismiss your post.

Germany has consistently beat renewable targets in years advance and 50% of their gross electricity consumption comes from renewables.

It's baffling really to read political comments on ycombinator.

Both could be true: most projects facing initial blocking but eventually getting done. Would be a function of pipeline and lead time.

What about nuclear? If I understand correctly, there was nuclear capacity being closed while coal is still burnt in substantial numbers.

The German green party is against nuclear for spurious reasons, and too proud to admit wrongness.

Nuclear is commonly not considered a renewable, and the nuclear capacity was already EOL but for some power plants they went over the original closing date so was prologued, not closed.

Coal is on the rise. Gas is on the rise.

Err, don't the more current facts dismiss your post as well towards what you were commenting for? Coal is going up. Gas is going up. Both not renewable.

It's baffling really to see comments like this, honestly. You're completely misrepresenting our progress with renewables and how both our government and environmentalists have hindered our development of both the industry and real projects.

The "environmentalists" blocking windturbines are not the same environmentalists that are in favor of renewables.

Precisely. For example:

https://theintercept.com/2021/12/08/oil-industry-wind-farm-p...

> I'm all for environmental concerns ... but

> "Ruin my view".

You understand these aren't the same people, yes? The latter are wealthy entrenched (mostly conservative) NIMBYs who have no care for the environment, and have a deeply personal agenda. They may have appropriated the language of environmentalists when they talk about the impact of projects on their lives, but dismissing environmental concerns because some are using them in bad faith is not reasonable.

Bad faith actors always do this.

Even more broadly, what takes time is the governance, legal, bureaucratic, etc, processes. Governance is a lore unto itself.

While we may think we are dealing with 'reality' we are mainly dealing with the artifacts of the governance system - and it believes itself to be the determinant of reality itself!

It only pays lip service to the idea that it is there to facilitate and improve people's lives - the idea of governance/social contract/etc is an just an expedient idea that aseerts itself to be the master not the servant. It is the enemy of the individual.

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