California's fucking retarded

[Herr Lipp]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4652878.stm

Why not do something about real pollution instead of this dumbass media-coverage-inducing ploy. Fucking douches.

[vordabois]

Originally posted by Herr Lipp
Why not do something about real pollution instead of this dumbass media-coverage-inducing ploy. Fucking douches.

Dude... They do.

How many states in the union have something like this?

http://www.arb.ca.gov/homepage.htm

To the best of my knowledge, it's the only state board solely dedicated to air quality in the entire country. All of the other states, like Ohio, have general executive departments that are targeted at the environment in general... they target ALL the pollutants (ground, air, water, noise, etc.) as well as other environmental concerns.

Like I said on the gen board earlier, Laura was talking about how much gas costs where she lives, and I mentioned that California drivers pay out the ass in fuel tax. One of the main motivations for that extra taxation is to encourage reductions in air emissions caused by traffic. They also have initiatives in place that make carpooling beneficial to the driver.

(Storms move from the west to the east here, so the storms soak up the pollutants as they go over California and drag that acid-rainwater all over America's prime farmland, which -- as you might guess -- is quite problematic for our food production. So they are especially harsh with their air standards in California and all west-coast states.)

[Herr Lipp]

Doesnt take away the fact that calling peoples miniscule amounts of fag smoke a Biohazard is dumb. Cows farts in one farming state probably produce as much pollution as the whole countries excess fag smoke.

P.S. California SHOULD be doing something about pollution. I dont think they should be particularly applauded for getting round to it now. Isn't LA famous for smog? Great tourist attraction!

[Herr Lipp]

Ach, it doesnt matter anyway, seeing as it all differs from state to state. When America helps to put a death sentence on the environment, nobody is gonna say "America was a main culprit, but at least California tried!"

Poor Arnie.

[vordabois]

But yeah, I mean, the pollution from smoking is over-exaggerated, IMO. I used to smoke, pack a day. Stopped about four years ago.

When people saw me smoking and found it necessary to say "smoking's bad for you" I'd respond by kind of flipping out, coming back at them with "Oh, IT IS?! Are you serious?! Holy shit, thanks for telling me!! You saved my life!!"

But I don't think the government should have the right to step into an issue like that, personally.

[Herr Lipp]

It's the nanny-state argument. Britain could be considered a nanny-state in a lot of ways (NHS, Benefits, Council Houses etc etc) but I dont think it is brave enough to try and stop people from smoking in the street. Hell, they're having a hard enough time convincing Parliament for a ban on smoking in restaurants, not even pubs.

you're up early/late.

[vordabois]

Originally posted by Herr Lipp
Ach, it doesnt matter anyway, seeing as it all differs from state to state. When America helps to put a death sentence on the environment, nobody is gonna say "America was a main culprit, but at least California tried!"

Poor Arnie.

Yes, and with a moron like Bush in office, fat fucking chance.

That man's record on the environment is absolutely repulsive. For that alone, I would denounce that fucker even if he was pro-gay rights and middle-class-centric.

[Herr Lipp]

It's alright for me to denounce the future, I'm just one man, and I can't change an awful lot (though I have been trying to cut down on wasted electricity but still thats not important!).

But when you have a hand in shaping a country, an important one at that, I think you've gotta be one two-faced asshole to just dismiss the issues.

[DrHibbert]

I don't doubt that there are severe harms from breathing second hand smoke. Probably a lot more than cows farting (and if not, we'd better start researching that!).

[vordabois]

Originally posted by Herr Lipp
But when you have a hand in shaping a country, an important one at that, I think you've gotta be one two-faced asshole to just dismiss the issues.

No, no... It goes beyond that.

Since the Republicans have gotten hold of the legislature and [just before] they got hold of the Presidency (technically, since 1998), the amount of "full-time", paid lobbyists in Washington DC has risen by a count of 35,000 to a total of 70,000... or double what their population was in 1998.

Coincidence?

From "Take It Back", written by James Carville and Paul Begala...

In 2001, Bush named Stephen Holmstead assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, in charge of air and radiation. Before that, Holmstead had been an attorney at Latham and Warkins, where he represented power companies, some of the biggest sources of air pollution in America.

When the EPA proposed new rules on air pollution, something about them struck Martha Kearing as funny. Funny strange, not funny ha-ha. Keating, a scientist with the environmental organization Clean The Air, noted that fully twelve paragraphs of the new EPA rule had been copied almost word-for-word from an industry proposal. The proposal had been written by none other than the law firm of Latham and Watkins.

The new rules (should we call them the Bush rules or the industry-written rules? Since they're the same, it's hard to tell which is the more accurate description) slowed down requirements to clean up mercury by as much as eleven years. This despite the fact that mercury in air pollution falls to the earth in rain, where it poisons fish. It's gotten so bad that forty-three states have issued advisories against eating fish. Mercury is toxic to the developing nervous systems of unborn babies. The Environmental Working Group says, "Exposure to mercury in the womb can cause learning deficits, delay the mental development of children, and cause other neurological problems."

You would think that our ostentatiously pro-life president and his self-proclaimed pro-life party would be aghast at the notion of foot-dragging on cleaning up a toxin that is poisoning the brains of helpless unborn babies. But you would be wrong. "Pro-life" is a handy label for some Republicans, but "pro-lobbyist" is their real religion.

Let us ponder the case of J. Steven Griles, who became the number two person at the Interior Department in 2001. A protege of the anti-environmental wack job James Watt, Griles once begged that he wanted to "turn the lights out" on the office that regulates the mining industry. In examining Griles, one journalist concluded that his "20-plus year career as an industry-friendly political appointee and high-powered industry lobbbyist... appears to have had one primary focus: get government out of the regulation business. -- and when you can't do that, get mining executives into governmental regulation.

So when Bush gave Griles the power to do just that, he didn't waste time. He was a key player in the effort to allow mountaintop coal removal. It's a simple process, really. You just lop the top off a mountain, dump the debris -- tons of toxic sludge -- into the riverbed below, dig what you need out of the hole, then walk away. Under Giles, twelve hundred miles of Appalachian streambeds were buried in toxic sludge by this technique. "Griles allowed the coal industry to rape the people and the environment of Appalachia," says Judy Bonds, director of the West Virginia environmental group Coal River Mountain Watch. "He either thinks we're second-class citizens or he doesn't even know we exist."

Perhaps a bigshot Washington Republican like Griles did in fact see folks in Appalachia as second-class citizens. He sure saw corporate bigwigs as first-class people. Despite Griles's pledge to not involve himself in issues affecting his former clients, two of his underlings pushed for $2 million in no-bid contracts for Advanced Power Technologies, a former Griles client. And Griles reached across bureaucratic lines to pressure the EPA not to block a plan to open up eight million acres in Wyoming and Montana for drilling -- a plan that included no fewer than six of Griles's former clients.

...there's plenty more where that came from. :-p Bush has seemingly made it a point to put lobbyists in charge of the regulation of industries they'd lobbied for in the past. There are a little over 100 other examples.