| | | Don, the original Environmental Protection Agency people had a sensible purpose - stopping the fouling of the air, water and soil.
Lead, soot, nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, vanadium and muck from nickel smelters filled the air, as Beijing now experiences. Children's developing brains were poisoned, never reaching their potential. Buildings dissolved from the acidity of the rain [see the limestone buildings of London]. The soot coated London's buildings black and Los Angeles had foul smog. One could see large diesel trucks take off from traffic lights belching huge clouds of soot with carcinogens and simple filth. Chimneys poured out smoke into London's air so that an evening run for fun was not a healthy activity. Across the USA, and the world, waterways were normally open sewers, rendering them uninhabitable by even anaerobic bacteria let alone fish and birds. In NZ, the Manukau Harbour was totally dead. NZ introduced similar laws to those of the USA to stop the pollution.
CO2 is a different thing. It is not unclean as they say. CO2 is inherently a good thing. Like water which is to we scientifically literate people also a chemical, H2O. Those silly EPA people even threw in the word "chemical" to scare the rubes in their "We must act now, do not bother thinking." assertion of the need to panic, now, not later.
The main problem at the EPA is that they don't now have much to do, other than mission creep to keep the cash flowing and environmental junkets on tap. They like to go to Cancun too. They are a solution, looking for a problem. They need cash, and lots of it, every week, to make payroll. If they can't find something to panic about, the politicians might close them down as an agency having served its purpose. Argggghhhhh... the last thing a government department, or any department, wants to see. In the business world, when a department stops contributing profits, they become visibly useless. When a government department stops producing profits, it's business as usual as they are a money heaven, not a profit centre.
Mqurice |
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