Racism was a big factor in the Flint water crisis, a new report explains.
"Based on a year-long study, the report details how government failed Flint’s black residents for decades. Implicit bias and systemic racism ingrained in housing, education, infrastructure, and emergency management all perpetuated discrimination and eventually led to toxic lead levels in Flint’s water. The commission writes, “fixing the problems that originated in Flint’s latest chapter will address the tumor but not the cancer.”"
Regulations provide an easy target for those pushing back against government. However, regulations are simply laws...and for a nation that popularized "laws not men", it seems self-hating to rail against them. Old laws should go away when useless, but the existence of laws does not define government overreach, it defines our collective expression of what sets the floor of society. When repealing a law or interpreting it narrowly would cause death, we need to reconsider...
Clean Power Plan Repeal Would Cost America $600 Billion, Cause 120,000 Premature Deaths
"The Trump administration has prioritized repealing the Clean Power Plan (CPP), a set of rules by the U.S. EPA aimed at limiting pollution from power plants. New analysis shows that repealing the rule would cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars, add more than a billion tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and cause more than 100,000 premature deaths due to inhaled particulate pollution."
...otherwise we doom ourselves to relive an era when we did not enjoy the protections the laws provided. Taking things for granted challenges baseball and apple pie when defining the American experience, but enough people alive now lived back then that you would hope we would not have to relive to believe.
Why We Need the EPA
"Perhaps the EPA has been too successful for its own good. In the same way that vaccines have given parents the luxury of forgetting what measles and whooping cough were like, the EPA has nearly wiped out the national memory of the contaminated environment of the 1960s. But things were so bad then that support for creating the agency and our major environmental statutes was virtually unanimous—nearly everyone recognized the need for an environmental regulator."
I like hearing views that contradict my own. This article does that, but also highlights how challenging any prognostication can get. Can we assume innovation in one area but not another? Is countering a statement the same as addressing the core of an argument? My own writing improves as I read the words of others and learn from them.
California Is Considering a 100 Percent Renewable Energy Law. That’s a Bad Idea
"We don’t know that a 100 percent renewable approach is the fastest, cheapest or easiest way to decarbonize the grid. We do know that it will be expensive and hard enough that its own advocates compare it to the most gargantuan collective effort in the nation’s history."
The Department of Defense has led the way (along with NASA) in the development of some of the most impactful technology of the last 75 years. I find it most interesting that the approach of DoD to renewables focuses not on the climate impact (although the Navy specifically addresses energy issues because of the impact climate change has on its base locations), but on all the other impacts. Limiting the energy discussion to simply the point of transfer forgets all of the issues with transportation, storage, and handling that make renewables a more effective approach.
The Department of Defense Wants to Double Down on Renewables
"But military officials argue to Reuters that this shift to renewables isn’t really motivated by a desire to save the planet, but to make systems more efficient, safe, and robust. For instance, an Army facility running on renewables would be immune to grid attacks; a hybrid tank doesn’t need to stop to refuel as often; and in war zones a solar panel can’t explode like a tank of gas."
Happy Friday!
No comments:
Post a Comment