Good one. As you say, "...well-funded, widely-disseminated, professionally-crafted bullshit!."
After touring the construction of a 400 acre solar farm (which included innovative irrigation to grow grass for sheep), I found myself chatting with a MAHA type at a bash in a groovy little Colorado town. OMG, what about the lead in the panels, what about the EMFs? (If all the solder in every panel were dissolved in acid and spread on the site, that lead would be about equal to average soil lead. EMFs... what can one say, it's an electric generator, there will be some.) Wind turbines, they know an expansive litany of woes. Battery fires and toxics, oh boy! Look at these side effects; the cure is worse than the disease. Sound familiar?
Gosh, extracting and burning FFs has "side effects," too. YUGE, even. RFK poisoned himself with mercury from fish, which got a lot of their mercury from coal smoke deposition. Instead focus folks on vanishingly small risks from lead or fluorides in most drinking water, from the guv'mint, or radon, from the ground.
I do think we need to celebrate a bit more the huge declines in use, emissions and exposures to lead, mercury, cadmium, PM, CO, HCs and VOCs, raw sewage, DDT, etc. which are the result of 50 years of, eek, regulations, eek. There are EJ communities where some of these are still too high, but in most of those the exposures are greatly reduced from 40 years ago. Kinda like with vaccines that have rendered nasty diseases very rare, folks forget how these regs have improved what was very bad air and water in many many more places than today.
It sure is hard to get traction for addressing emerging problems like PFAS, microplastics, etc., when we gotta re-fight old battles, while some natural allies are on the other side or on the fence. I suppose the bullshit is "professionally-crafted" to do just that.
To be the head of the EPA, shouldn't you at least have to *pretend* like you're trying to protect the environment? It's unnerving just how nakedly destructive their policies are.
Almost made me physically sick reading this. Apparently that's just the beginning. So much for all the false equivalence bullshit from people who couldn't drag themselves to the polls during the election cycle because "Kamala is evil too." It's good to vote AGAINST something if that something is everything we are seeing now..
Thanks for continuing to provide impeccably well sourced and researched information, Emily. It amazes me that greed and power-lust are so ingrained in these people that they don’t gaf about their own kids’ future (or current!) health. Also, the level of ignorance of basic laws of physics is truly staggering. When the air, land and water suffer, we suffer. You can’t breathe money. You can’t eat or drink money. Part of me thinks maybe the “EPA” is misnamed. Given humanity’s pathological narcissism, maybe they’d be more inclined to keep these laws on the books if it was called the “People Protection Agency.” As it is now, all we’ve got is the “Industrial Polluters and Shareholders Protection Agency.” (IPASPA?) Greedy Asshole Shareholders Protection (GASP) seems more fitting.
WRT your interview on The Hill TV -- I'm really happy that you had the courage to get in front of an obviously unfriendly audience. Next time I would encourage you to take advantage of the opportunity to tell people who probably don't agree with you on most climate-change related topics what you would ask/tell this administration to do differently. The listeners/viewers will probably still fry you but perhaps it will generate some discussion about a step you would advocate, even if that step isn't a game changer. For example - asking the administration to stop the censorship of climate change information on federal websites and simply accept that climate change is real and is largely a result of human actions (as proven by innumerable studies). The administration won't do it, of course, but at least the viewers would have to defend that position instead of simply tearing down your bona fides by claiming you can't come up with anything to even say to this administration.
If you think of our addiction to fossil fuels as an exponential extrapolation of how humans diverged from other primates by 'offloading' the metabolic burden of digestion to external & technological agriculture / cooking / fermentation ( perhaps in exchange for rapidly evolving / risky / unstable big brains ) it suggests another sort of tight feedback entanglement between fossil fuels, welness-woo, and the mass delusion of crowds.
Good one. As you say, "...well-funded, widely-disseminated, professionally-crafted bullshit!."
After touring the construction of a 400 acre solar farm (which included innovative irrigation to grow grass for sheep), I found myself chatting with a MAHA type at a bash in a groovy little Colorado town. OMG, what about the lead in the panels, what about the EMFs? (If all the solder in every panel were dissolved in acid and spread on the site, that lead would be about equal to average soil lead. EMFs... what can one say, it's an electric generator, there will be some.) Wind turbines, they know an expansive litany of woes. Battery fires and toxics, oh boy! Look at these side effects; the cure is worse than the disease. Sound familiar?
Gosh, extracting and burning FFs has "side effects," too. YUGE, even. RFK poisoned himself with mercury from fish, which got a lot of their mercury from coal smoke deposition. Instead focus folks on vanishingly small risks from lead or fluorides in most drinking water, from the guv'mint, or radon, from the ground.
I do think we need to celebrate a bit more the huge declines in use, emissions and exposures to lead, mercury, cadmium, PM, CO, HCs and VOCs, raw sewage, DDT, etc. which are the result of 50 years of, eek, regulations, eek. There are EJ communities where some of these are still too high, but in most of those the exposures are greatly reduced from 40 years ago. Kinda like with vaccines that have rendered nasty diseases very rare, folks forget how these regs have improved what was very bad air and water in many many more places than today.
It sure is hard to get traction for addressing emerging problems like PFAS, microplastics, etc., when we gotta re-fight old battles, while some natural allies are on the other side or on the fence. I suppose the bullshit is "professionally-crafted" to do just that.
Genocide ecocide fascism are the 3 evils.
Regime change here and in Israel is necessary now.
Refuse Fascism
Oppose Oppression
People
Planet
Peace
dear comrades
To be the head of the EPA, shouldn't you at least have to *pretend* like you're trying to protect the environment? It's unnerving just how nakedly destructive their policies are.
Almost made me physically sick reading this. Apparently that's just the beginning. So much for all the false equivalence bullshit from people who couldn't drag themselves to the polls during the election cycle because "Kamala is evil too." It's good to vote AGAINST something if that something is everything we are seeing now..
Thanks for continuing to provide impeccably well sourced and researched information, Emily. It amazes me that greed and power-lust are so ingrained in these people that they don’t gaf about their own kids’ future (or current!) health. Also, the level of ignorance of basic laws of physics is truly staggering. When the air, land and water suffer, we suffer. You can’t breathe money. You can’t eat or drink money. Part of me thinks maybe the “EPA” is misnamed. Given humanity’s pathological narcissism, maybe they’d be more inclined to keep these laws on the books if it was called the “People Protection Agency.” As it is now, all we’ve got is the “Industrial Polluters and Shareholders Protection Agency.” (IPASPA?) Greedy Asshole Shareholders Protection (GASP) seems more fitting.
Another great post. Thanks for sharing.
WRT your interview on The Hill TV -- I'm really happy that you had the courage to get in front of an obviously unfriendly audience. Next time I would encourage you to take advantage of the opportunity to tell people who probably don't agree with you on most climate-change related topics what you would ask/tell this administration to do differently. The listeners/viewers will probably still fry you but perhaps it will generate some discussion about a step you would advocate, even if that step isn't a game changer. For example - asking the administration to stop the censorship of climate change information on federal websites and simply accept that climate change is real and is largely a result of human actions (as proven by innumerable studies). The administration won't do it, of course, but at least the viewers would have to defend that position instead of simply tearing down your bona fides by claiming you can't come up with anything to even say to this administration.
If you think of our addiction to fossil fuels as an exponential extrapolation of how humans diverged from other primates by 'offloading' the metabolic burden of digestion to external & technological agriculture / cooking / fermentation ( perhaps in exchange for rapidly evolving / risky / unstable big brains ) it suggests another sort of tight feedback entanglement between fossil fuels, welness-woo, and the mass delusion of crowds.