Tesla uses new Texas law to avoid Austin's environmental regulations
kvue.com
kvue.com
Get these things changed at the state level.
It makes sense that the land owners can choose to be de-annexed if they want.
I can't really blame a for-profit corporation for using the laws as they are written. I blame Texas for having the loophole.
It's funny how whenever a corporation behaves hostilely toward its community, or its customers, or its competitors the rallying cry is "Well it's for profit, they might as well do whatever is mathematically correct", but whenever people turn around and try to make the behavior mathematically incorrect by, say, regulating the corporation or refusing to do business with them or protesting and blocking the factory site they're all of a sudden being unfair and disrupting legitimate business operations.
I'm just saying that a corporation is sort of like the frog/scorpion story; it's their nature to maximize profit in any way they can, and at some point you can't even really blame them. It's up to governments and customers to make bad practices illegal or impractical.
I think we give way too much of a free pass to the actual people making the actual decisions to fuck people over. I think if we started yelling at them and ostracizing them more instead of just shrugging and saying it's the nature of the game, there'd be a lot less misbehavior going around.
I'm just saying that we kind of have to expect this stuff. If there is a loophole, I think we have to assume that someone eventually finding it and exploit it. I'm not saying that every corporation is always going to do it, just that some definitely will. It's up to lawmakers and voters to ensure that the loopholes are closed.
The local laws exist because changing the state laws are impossible, I know, I’m an Austinite.
I don't disagree though I do wonder if those days are numbered. Texas cities tend to be a lot more liberal than the more rural areas, and the populations there are growing. I think with the increasing demand for tech in Texas, it's potentially going to bring in a lot of left-leaning people into the cities and their respective suburbs, and I don't know that it will be as clear-cut.
Wrong. We have initiatives on the ballot all the time.
https://letthevotersdecide.com/learn/how-to-file-a-ballot-in...
> > > There’s no state referendums in Texas.
There are. We call them propositions, and we have some in every statewide election.
> Only local initiatives can be done by voters in Texas.
What you mean is that statewide propositions are put on the ballot by the legislature, not by petitions. But your statement that I was responding to said nothing of the sort, only that there's no state referendums in Texas.
> The company's ability to deannex from the city comes after Senate Bill 2038 passed last year.
And he has been trying to get the ordinance repealed for years.
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2017/06/13/gov-greg-abb...
Austin also has to protect its Aquafier, which has been under constant attack for decades.
https://www.texastribune.org/2013/11/10/drought-abbott-keeps...
Austin has been under attack by out-of-city politicians for its entire existence. It goes back to the 1800s.
Anything Austin does, the State tries to negate.
> In January 2015, a few weeks before taking office as governor and four months before selling his Central Austin home, Abbott blasted tree ordinances as part of the “patchwork quilt” of local bans hurting the state.
> “Texas is being Californianized and you may not even be noticing it,” Abbott told a 2015 conference hosted by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential think tank. “It’s being done at the city level with bag bans, fracking bans, tree-cutting bans. We’re forming a patchwork quilt of bans and rules and regulations that is eroding the Texas model.”
Is it really that ridiculous? Texas has ETJs (extra territorial jurisdiction), which is what let Austin have some control over unincorporated land around it. This doesn’t seem that strange to me - functionally it’s not very different from a county imposing laws. More info on that in this article about Tesla avoiding environmental rules (https://electrek.co/2024/04/22/tesla-skirts-austins-environm...). On the other hand I can see how people who want to live under less control may dislike that.
> Cities with their own local environmental rules is a recipe for disaster.
I disagree with this. As an example, Seattle has historically protected trees and the environment with lots of city level regulations. Those requirements have been significantly undone by the development (construction) lobby in the last 10 years, mostly by amplifying this notion that there is a housing “crisis”. But the city’s old regulations were what made the city attractive in the first place. Now there is an absurd situation where there are different rules that apply to everyday homeowners, who face lots of restrictions on their land, versus developers who can cut down old trees and “replace” them by planting a new (young) tree somewhere else (which is obviously not the same). I’ve already seen this erosion of city regulations result in numerous neighborhoods losing trees and green spaces that were previously protected for decades, and it’s really sad.
So the people subject to extra-territorial jurisdiction also get to participate in Austin elections? Do they have representation in the city government? I guess that's a form of "less control" for sure.
The surrounding cities also had similar rules for what it’s worth. But stepping back, I don’t get the point of trying to concentrate density in a small area and creating problems for the environment and quality of life. In the end you get a concrete landscape of big apartment blocks with all the habitats for small animals, birds, fish destroyed. That’s not a great place to live. It seems healthier to make use of our country’s land and have development that fits in with its area, and it would mean better living conditions for people as well.
It's not the same. The US has (nominally) some measure of keeping people out of the country. Cities in the US can't keep people from other parts of the US from moving there. We don't have internal population control like say China internal residence permits (I'm sure there are other examples, that's just what I know about).
So people are gonna move to cities whether you want them to or not, and we need to build places for them to live. Unless you want to drastically restrict freedom of movement.
> But stepping back, I don’t get the point of trying to concentrate density in a small area and creating problems for the environment and quality of life
From an environmental perspective, it is the better way if you don't push people back into pre-industrial era.
Dense cities use drastically less energy per capita, and pollute less exhaust/etc.
I feel like the arguments for density being environmentally friendly are often focused on a few aspects to tell this narrative, but ignore other aspects. Traffic is higher in dense areas and contributes to concentrated pollution and mental health issues that have other effects further on. Constructing giant concrete buildings is more polluting than small wooden buildings (if sustainably harvested). And so on. A comprehensive analysis of all the aspects doesn’t seem to exist. But I’ve not searched very much either, I’ll admit.
I don't think that the spiraling housing costs across the country can be attributed to local environmental laws.
I don't think that the decreased birth rate can be largely attributed to the housing issue.
I don't think that the decreased birth rate is anything like an existential crisis for the US.
I think that when it comes to laws that address harms your neighbors might inflict on you, the more local those laws are decided, the better (generally speaking).
There is not an analogy here between states of the nation and cities of the states. In the federal system, states have all the powers. Within the state, states also have all the powers.
So local control makes sense for local issues, and federal control makes sense for widespread issues like runoff.