❝Respectfully, I do not believe that a government agency should be trusted with caring for the environment.

When government is "responsible" for something, regular people stop paying attention. It becomes Somebody Else's Problem (I stole the label from Douglas Adams) and they can't be bothered. Then when something goes wrong, those ordinary people demand reform of the agency, not fixing the problem.

Additionally, it will always depend on keeping the "right people" in elected office AND overlooking abuse of power because it's the "right people." Case in point, the CO₂ rules under the Obama EPA were far beyond anything used before and used shoddy science as the justification. Criticism of the rules was actively discouraged not because of the effects of the rules, but because it was the EPA and for the Greater Good. The institution and the policy was more important than the results.

Personally I avoid environmentalism. I prefer ecology and I focus on the interconnections and the tradeoffs. Power with instead of power over.

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Pardon, but it's not the EOC (End of Conversation).

Carson's Silent Spring was disputed and is still disputed to this day. That should be part of any conversation including that book. It should also be a study for how propaganda is passed off as fact.

Looking at the history of the EPA, it's amazing how ineffective it has been. Just as one brief example, the "Superfund" has shifted the cost of environmental cleanup from the polluters to the taxpayer. Since the polluters face minimal consequences, of course they don't clean up their act (pun intended).

As I pointed out above, if it is government's "responsibility" to clean up the environment, then regular people just don't pay attention.

Just out of curiosity, what's the fix for "too many people?" Forced sterilizations? Killing by the millions and tens of millions?❞

NeoNotes are the selected comments that I made on other boards, in email, or in response to articles where I could not respond directly.

Tags: cross posted & ecology & environmentalism & ugh-politics & power with vs power over & Somebody Else's Problem & Douglas Adams & Silent Spring & Superfund