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I think rules as a concept are kinda under attack. This ranks really below my radar on shit to care about in the current situation.

Is there a steelmanned argument on why this matters for anyone atm?

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100,000 American deaths per year due to poor air quality.

What’s that as a percentage of population?

This is a technology forum, we are all aware of the law of large numbers. Is (100,000) an acceptable rate or note

There are 3.3 million deaths annually in the US. So 3% of deaths are due to air pollution. That's a very large number.

How many deaths would there have been if people did not have access to the technologies that create air pollution? If every CO2/pollution emitting device (cars, power plants, metal production, food processing, coal mines, etc) were all to be shuttered or massively cut back at once, deaths would increase substantially more. Yeah air pollution is bad but I think the solution needs to be incentive/reward based rather than punitive.

The rules discussed in the article are not anywhere close to your straw man.

Reading the comments HN in general, you wouldn't think anything else was under attack.

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