Rand Paul runs up against Environmentalists

[liveonearth]

Perhaps the reason that his father, Ron Paul, has been successful in congress longterm, is because he has not gone out on the anti-environmental limb. It's a particularly shaky limb. Rand's recent introduction of a bill that would eliminate the inter-state control of air quality by the FDA is running up against the Sierra Club and others. The

Comments

[ford_prefect42]

The problem is that we may very soon have to decide between polluted cities and mass starvation. Just sayin'. It's not as clear as one might hope that these policies are actually beneficial to the environment at this point either, given that each national regulation sends polluting industries to nations that are already facing the famines and thus don't worry so much about the pollution

[liveonearth]

I guess you haven't met a whole lot of reasonable environmentalists. Or maybe the environmentalists haven't met a whole lot of reasonable industrialists. There has to be a middle road. We have all got to be able to figure out a goal that is worth more than our aversions.

Bottom line: people are going to starve. And die of diseases that are preventable and curable. People are going to die of impure drinking water, and in wars over water. It would be foolhardy of us, who are relatively rich, to simply hand over our best resources to megacorporations and governments in the name of "the economy" on the grand scale. We have to drive a hard bargain on both sides of the deal, to get the most out of it that we can, as citizens.

I'm not overly fond of wind farms. I'd rather see us investing in a new generation of nuclear plants. So I again fall in the space between the groups.... but I have to go, big exam coming up! Thanks for your comments as always.

[ford_prefect42]

It isn't that I haven't met reasonable environmentalists, hell, I think of myself *as* one, in that I consider environmental damage to be an externality of industrial activities that must be paid for by the industry and am well aware that we have no alternative to this environment. My problem isn't that there aren't reasonable enviros, it's that the sheer *numbers* of unreasonable enviros makes things difficult. The problem is that the vast majority of the enviros are unreasonable on one issue or another, and that comes off as an unreasonableness on the part of enviros and enviro regulation in toto.

I'm totally with you on nuclear vs. wind. You know why that isn't happening?

Best of luck on the exams.

[liveonearth]

People are freaked about nukes. And nukes ARE risky. Did you have a better reason?