zlacker

>>geox+(OP)
In my opinion it is obvious and should be uncontroversial that some environmental regulations work and are great and should if anything be reinforced, while other environmental regulations do more harm than good and need to be reigned in or eliminated.

Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that must be either supported or opposed in totality is a manipulative political maneuver and it should be forcefully rejected.

Regulations are not people, and they don't have rights. It is fair and reasonable to demand that environmental regulation justify its existence with hard, scientifically verifiable data or else get chopped. Clearly, banning leaded gasoline has that kind of justification, and therefore I'm strongly in favor of maintaining that ban and extending it wherever it isn't in place yet. The same reasonable standard should be applied to other regulations across the board.

>>cfigge+7B1
It's really easy to sit and demand evidence before regulating something. But consider that if we waited for hard evidence to accumulate before banning lead in gasoline, we likely never would have banned it because the hard evidence wouldn't exist.

I also don't agree on the principle that regulations are "harmful" or "helpful." Rather, you have to define who the regulation harms, and who it helps. For example antitrust enforcement harms shareholders and some employees of very large firms, but it helps many employees and arguably improves the landscape for competition between many smaller firms. So whether a regulation is preferable comes down to values.

In the case of leaded gas, it harms basically everybody, but it helps fuel companies, so it was an easy thing to change.

>>throww+3D1
We had research to support the EPA phase down of lead.

Also, your assertion that lead “helps fuel companies” is fundamentally mistaken. Gasoline is a mass-produced commodity. Oil companies have single digit profit margins. These companies aren’t making Big Tech profit margins where they can absorb higher costs without passing them along to consumers. Cost savings from things like gasoline additives accrue to consumers at the gas pump.

>>rayine+7J1
Until the price of gas starts to remotely reflect the medium to long term costs of climate change I basically always celebrate anything that increases gas or carbon-based energy prices. Like, it sucks... but there's lots of data that consumers respond to these prices in their choices.

The way I think about it, the entirety of global civilization is massively, massively subsidizing carbon emission.

>>empyrr+sN1
Do you know of any research or calculations of what that number ought to be?

>>DiggyJ+BP1
If you wanted to pay for direct air capture of CO2 to directly "undo" your climate effect of driving, the cost would currently be about $6 per gallon. Price comes from [1], found [2] looking for a second opinion on current direct air capture cost.

[1] https://theclimatecapitalist.com/articles/gas-should-cost-13... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/phildeluna/2024/11/29/will-dire...

>>Cerium+4V1
I wonder whether those methods scale at those prices to the theoretical demand of undoing burning gasoline. I doubt it.