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 should be uncontroversial that introducing shit into an environment where it doesn't belong is a bad idea, yet many people remain unconvinced that dumping tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere or tons of fertilizer by-products into the oceans is a bad idea.

>>Father+5J1
It's less that but rather the hypocrisy of promoting burdensome regulations and bans implemented in one county (e.g. Germany) which hurts domestic industry and raises costs for its citizens, all while being silent on countries like China and India continuing to massively build more and more coal fired power plants

>>nxm+RK1
1. Germany industrialized 100 years before China. It's been burning large quantities of coal for far longer.

2. Germany or at least the EU can and should impose a carbon fee on imports related to a given nations carbon emissions/reductions.

3. Economically transitioning to renewables is better for a nations economy than continuing to burn fossil fuels anyway. Renewables are cheaper.

Pointing to another bad actor as an excuse to continue to be a bad actor we learn is not a moral position somewhere around 5 years old.

>>breaky+oU1
I will say on point one, the rate which a country can scale usage throws this off. For example the first 50 years of Germany's usage likely represents far less than a current Chinese year of usage.