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China Chokes On Smog So Bad That Planes Can't Land (usatoday.com)
Major cities across northern China choked Monday under a blanket of smog so thick that industries were ordered shut down and air and ground traffic was disrupted. From a report: At least 23 cities issued red alerts for a swath of pollution that has hovered over much of the nation since Friday, China's Xinhua news agency reported. Alerts are expected to remain in effect through Wednesday. Hospitals set emergency procedures in motion to deal with an influx of breathing-related illnesses. Large hospitals in the port city of Tianjin, less than 100 miles southeast of Beijing, saw a surge in asthma and other respiratory issues, China's People's Daily reported. The pollution forced the city to close the highways and caused delays and cancellations for dozens of flights, Xinhua said.
This is what you get with low cost manufacturing!
Trump is right china is gaming the system.
Ahh, I love the smell of dereg in the mor....*cough* *cough* *cough*
Table-ized A.I.
Scott Pruitt seems to think that a lot of what led China to this problem is a good idea for the US. Being as they are opposed to expansion and modernization of the rail network, how will they get to their rallies if their planes can't take off?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If you want special effects with your news, just pop some bubblewrap and inhale deeply.
Trump is hobbling the EPA so badly that by the time he's done our smog will be so bad that we can't land airplanes either.
This is what you get with Trump / Putin's anti-environment policies.
Choke on it, fascists.
Trump is hobbling the EPA so badly that by the time he's done our smog will be so bad that we can't land airplanes either.
We'll have the best smog. The yugest smog. We're going to bring 1,000,000 smog manufacturing jobs back to this country.. Our smog will be so great that even the Chinese will be envious.
And not only that I'll build a wall to stop our smog going to Mexico! If Mexican's want our smog they'll have to pay for it!
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
You can actually see this on satellite pics. It's a brown haze
It's not just their manufacturing. Their transport contributes massively as well.
That said, have you been there?
A billion people are moving from essentially subsistence living to a modern urban lifestyle in the course of 30 years. To achieve this there is mass construction going on everywhere. Construction of everything from roads to power stations to factories. But you are talking a society where lots and lots and lots of people have basically no disposable income, which means the cheapest possible vehicles are the only option. When you go to the absolute bottom of the transport section your efficiency is poor and your pollution is high.
The west already went through this. However they went through this when their population was a fraction of todays levels. It meant that the gross amount of pollution emitted was lower but the per capita level was much higher.
China is trying to control their pollution output, and one of the good things is that technology exists today to reduce it. However we aren't going to see a drop soon unfortunately.
Slashdot can't go more than a few days without the usual article about how backwards the U.S. is and how far advanced China's "green" energy is.
Does this mean that green energy is the cause of all this air pollution?
The two main culprits are Coal burning and auto and truck exhaust.
But you knew that...
I get it though, you were trying to be "cute" with a ridiculous and inflammatory statement about "green" energy.
If Coal burning is "green", then it is the cause of all this air pollution.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
In California, they are practically outlawing cow farts.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Choke on it, fascists.
Don't worry, they will. But, then, so will everyone else.
Thanks to existing treaties, China has no economic need to roll out its green energy sector at the moment. When the effects of Climate Change get so obvious and scary that trading blocks like the EU ban imports from countries that are still pumping out massive quantities of greenhouse gases, they'll be ready to make a quick, easy transition to renewable-based generation. And they'll eat America's lunch.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Don't worry, folks. By the time Trump has finished dismantling the EPA, US cities will be as bad or worse.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Flint proves the need for a strong, empowered EPA.
But of course when a republican governor instructs a republican he appointed to poison Flint's water supply he's going to blame the EPA..
The EPA is of course basically the only organization which can compel republicans to stop poisoning their citizens, so they are de-legitimized and have the hands tied at every step of the way.
As long as the people who care about clean water don't bother voting, republicans will continue to poison our water supply.
Hey, no problem. The air is clean here. We outsource our pollution to China and India.
Corporate CEOs love that stuff. It's what they get measured by.
We save billions of dollars importing products produced for far less than we could and we breathe clean air and drink clean water. If this is losing then I'd hate to see what winning looks like.
That's just it, there's so much smog generating so much lift that the planes physically can't land. Even if they stop the engines it just sits there hovering.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
It's not just their manufacturing. Their transport contributes massively as well.
While manufacturing and transport do contribute to air pollution in China, the biggest contributor by far is the use of coal for heating during winter. This is very obvious in northern China, where regulations specify the dates on which heating for buildings start and end. There'll be blue skies and clean air right up to the date when winter heating starts and then heavy smog and air pollution immediately after. This is also why the smog problem is a lot less severe in southern China, even though most of China's manufacturing and economic development over the past two decades were concentrated in the southern regions around Shanghai and Shenzhen.
You can't land on a runway you can't see.
Rather, ask Silverton, CO and the Navajo Nation.
Why not build the wall out of smog, w/ all its beautiful doors, and whatever, so that they can come in legally!!!
Environmentalists are never happy, next week the smog will be so dense that planes can land on it, and they will likely complain about that too. No pleasing them.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Most of their population is concentrated in the eastern half of their country. They need to spread out to the western parts, like Xinxiang, and resettle people there, then they'll be even
The fact that Flint is seen as a major disaster, worthy of much outrage, as opposed to the norm, shows just how good a job the EPA is doing.
In the US we take it for granted that we can go anywhere in the country and the drinking water will be safe and clean. It may taste like ass at times, but we don't have to boil it or worry about getting some kind of stomach virus. We don't have to tell people, "Don't drink the water" like if you go to Mexico or Latin America. We don't have to worry about heavy metals or radioactive materials in our drinking water.
In the US we take it for granted that we can walk outside without the need for surgical face masks or even full on gas-masks because there's a choking cloud of smog in the air. Before Nixon created the EPA, we had cities that looked a lot like China.
In the US we take it for granted that the sky looks BLUE and not ORANGE because only the longer red wavelengths of light can cut through the smog. Read some of the stories about how before the Beijing Olympics, when the government seeded the clouds to temporarily flush all the smog, people would wander outside and marvel at the blue sky.
All of these things are because of the EPA, and they don't even scratch the surface of what that agency does. So, once again, because cases like Flint are so far outside of the norm that they shock and anger us, just goes to show how good a job the EPA is actually doing.
Maybe not at an airport, but it will land.
Trump hasn't hobbled the EPA. He's president elect, not president. Nothing he has said or done so far changes the law or the actions of the EPA.
It's a dictatorship. No one sticks their neck out because it won't matter.
All it does is keep us alive.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
The Republican governor appointed a Democrat 'emergency manager'. They knew Flint was basically unfixable and that they would shortly be putting the blame on the last person in charge, hence the booby prize was given to a D (but he was forced to live in a budget).
IIRC that last lead water pipe was put in the Flint ground in the 1930s. What year did they go bankrupt again? What party ran the city for the last 70+ years?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Just saying.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's a dictatorship. No one sticks their neck out because it won't matter.
And we are?
Don't even pretend we're a democracy.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
... while the fascists blame them for the smog.
Yeah that heating thing is weird. I was there in easter and it was hot but all the hotels were being heated. It was down right unpleasant.
I think coal probably produces the most raw polution, but I would be surprised if it wasn't their cars that cause the most in-city smog. When you have that many cars and trucks moving slowly through your cities it would have to have an effect.
When I was there I had a day that was smog so bad your visibility was down to 200m and then the next day clear skies to the horizon then back again. So I think the smog has a lot to do with local weather / wind on any given day.
Make America Grey Again.
IIRC that last lead water pipe was put in the Flint ground in the 1930s. What year did they go bankrupt again? What party ran the city for the last 70+ years?
If you're thinking that political and economic decisions made in the 1960s and 1970s somehow managed to cause adverse chemical reactions in the water pipes, you're confused.
Bankruptcy wasn't the issue that caused the problem with the water mixing badly with the pipes, and the other pollution in Flint's water supply came from many private sources. It's a natural confluence of events, and the government there is the victim of it, the same as any declining industrial town in the Midwestern Rust Belt.
That said, if the people of Michigan cared, they could have done something. Most of them didn't, because they're white, and Flint is now majority black since all the whites moved out. Thus they care even less, and think that's what they deserve.
It's spitefulness writ large. Did you think it was just a problem in Alabama? Not really, and Birmingham also had its fun with bankruptcy, not that you heard about that one. Nobody seems to care about it.
This! A thousand times, this. I knew I should have saved that last mod point. :)
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
And not only that I'll build a wall to stop our smog going to Mexico!
That is the first reasonable way I've heard to get Mexico to pay for the wall. You, sir, have my respect.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
of cars. I'm here in Phoenix, Az with very little heavy industry and a fuckton of cars and there are days when the air is dangerous for children and old people.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It is losing a trade law by agreeing to free trade. If you have free trade you're effectively outsourcing your own regulations at the cost of jobs.
Winning would be re-imposing trade barriers, bringing jobs and manufacturing back home, and ... you're not going to like this ... paying american prices for american goods.
Wrong!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You should see what NAFTA did to Juarez. Very much the same thing though not as large or dense. And pollution does not respect political boundaries the people of New Mexico and West Texas get to enjoy it too.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The funny thing is that the millenials all *want* the crappy Ikea furniture. If they have an older relative trying to hand the solid stuff down - no thanks, they don't want it.
I remember when they used to talk that way about the smog in New York City and LA, back in the 70's. Nixon had just created the EPA and they were just ramping up to deal with that sort of thing. By the mid '80's, people had largely forgotten about that sort of thing in much of the USA. If you want to see what the USA would (will) look like without an EPA, go visit China.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Isn't Wikipedia marvelous? Zero-visibility landing capability exists, but it costs a buttload to equip the airplane and airport. The prevailing standard for ILS approaches in most airplanes at most airports is "200 & 1/4" -- when the airplane is at 200 feet altitude and 1/4 mile from the touchdown point, the pilot has to see the runway or break off the approach.
Flint (D) got its water from Detroit (D). They were building a pipeline to the lake. When the pipeline was 1 year from being complete Detroit (D) told them 'sign this 20 year contract for water or fuckoff, tomorrow.' They had little choice but get their water elsewhere. The city emergency manager (D, but appointed by R) got the water from a local river, intending to use it for a year. At the same time, a water company employee (D) took it on himself to stop using a chemical to seal lead pipes and prevent them from leaching.
Somehow this is someone else's fault. Cities run their own water companies, it was never Michigan's problem.
Birmingham is a shithole, so is Vacaville. All bankrupt due to their own incompetence.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Foggy air is less dense than dry air. Adding some particulates to it won't change the result much. In any case, a couple thousand feet of altitude difference will affect the air density far more than fog/smog can do.
since when has thick Smog or Fog affected a planes ability to land at major airports? I know it affects takeoffs as my local airport is regularly affected but it has never affected landings. could someone enlighten me why landings are affected?
In the US we take it for granted that we can walk outside without the need for surgical face masks or even full on gas-masks because there's a choking cloud of smog in the air. Before Nixon created the EPA, we had cities that looked a lot like China.
Not in Salt Lake City, UT we don't. I was not impressed by those pictures of China, compared to 2-6 weeks every winter here.
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/3587127-155/bagley-cartoon-making-bad-air-perfectly
Granted we do have the EPA (for now), which after years of telling UT to get its shit together, has finally upped the ante -- the local authorities have only 2 more years to come up with a plan to reduce air pollution.
I wonder if the EPA will still be around in 2 years. . .
If you want to see what the USA would (will) look like without an EPA, go visit China.
Now there are literally days when there's more pollution from China in Los Angeles than there is from Los Angeles.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Birmingham has never been in bankruptcy. The county it is in declared bankruptcy, but the city never has even been close to being bankrupt. I don't know where you got your news, but it's wrong.
Birmingham has never been bankrupt. Get your facts straight!
This is such a bigly idea, it's YUUUGE!!!!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
All of these things are because of the EPA, and they don't even scratch the surface of what that agency does.
To be fair, some of those things are because of the CARB, especially in California — the state which formerly had the worst smog problem; the state with the most vehicles, and the most vehicle-miles traveled; the state that gets the most pollution coming overseas from China.
People love to hate the CARB, and I have my own issues with them, but they really are instrumental in clean air in America — not just in California, but in other states which attempt to follow our example. Indeed, there are two emissions standards in America, but only two — there is the California standard, and there is the "almost everyone else" standard. A few states copy California on emissions regulations, not least because they are allowed to. The EPA claims authority over air quality standards in America, and actually won't permit states to create more stringent standards. California had air quality standards before the EPA, and won the right in court to continue to have standards which are superior to the federal standards. Other states then got the right to use our standards.
Don't be too in awe of the EPA. California is still making the rest of the country look like it loves to wipe its ass with... itself.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Democracies elect the majority vote holder. Or in the event of a multiparty system, the largest vote holder in ranked order.
The US isn't a democracy. Trump lost by (last count) 2,900,000 votes.
Seriously, does nobody take Civics anymore?
Facts are Facts.
If you wish to pretend a Republican system is a Democracy, go ahead, but it isn't.
Certain states have democratic elements. For example, Governors elected by the popular vote of all but prisoners. Real democracies let prisoners vote (see Canada). For example, Initiatives or other voting matters. Some of those have non Democracy elements, for example a 2/3 majority requirement or a 60 percent requirement.
But under no circumstances could US Federal Presidential elections, which use the non Democracy method of the Electoral College, be described as a "Democracy".
It is not.
FACT.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Right now the narrative is 'evil republicans' while the problem is 100% democrat made. Somebody obviously cares.
Fixing Flint's water system is Flint's problem. Perhaps they should raise taxes because nobody else is going to pay for it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Will be from to much water or not enough of it. Climate terror.
Get up!
This is a bad title. Like other noted, planes can land without visibility, and TFA does not tell about landing problem.
What TFA says is that planes are grounded in an attempt to curb pollution.
Unfiltered smoke from low quality coal is very foul, and produces lots of pollution per unit energy. That rotten egg smell is poisonous hydrogen sulphide, and there's soot and ash also.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
For a god laugh, and to see how bad LA used to be, take a look at this episode of Battlestar Galactica (1980 remake). Specifically, the 7:50 mark when these lines are spoken:
What's that odd-looking brown haze hanging over the city?
Must be some sort of defense shield.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You're joking, right? Because if it were quick and easy, they and everyone else would already have done it.
The "existing treaties" you speak of are an example of (from the US standpoint) the "bad deals" that Trump has complained of. Those treaties were only signed by China because China was exempted from any burden; other nations signed the treaties because they made their politicians look good to their shallow-minded voters.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
You think she would see fit to regulate the biggest polluters, i.e. her best friends? Maybe she'd tell them to "cut it out" like she did with wall st. before the 2008 collapse.
What was the margin of legal votes?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
What was the margin of legal votes?
The same. Zero point zero zero zero percent. In point of fact, for all the hubbub about illegal votes, the number nationwide is still below single digits (that's the total, not per state).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
nah, he's fine. you - please stop posting here. you seem to think this is an academic journal, some sort of publication, or a professional email. those are rules you made up for yourself that you want others to follow. Please start your own site and do whatever you want there. This site is a place where we're not idiots, so we don't care about a way something is written as long as we understand it. you are spamming this site with unwanted comments. go away - no one wants to read your offtopic unfunny unoriginal comments.
There are 4 errors in your post. Please go to school and learn English before you post again.
You're an embarrassment, even by slashdot standards. Christ, this place is worse than Birmingham.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
You are correct on many points but I think you missed another very important point. China is doing now what Europe and America did in the late 1700s and early 1800s. They are going through an industrial revolution. When this happened in the UK they had air quality issues too, possibly much worse than this even.
This is a classic example of those not learning from history are doomed to repeat it. China is a society built by the vision of a small group of people which has been imposed on the rest of the population by force and fear. It's also quite possible these elite few do know their history, know that their policy puts the public under such misery and threatens their health but they don't care. They would much rather take a path that creates greater wealth and power for themselves even if that means the rest suffer.
China though could be a lesson for the rest of the world. I keep hearing on how we need more government to control global warming and pollution. Well, China has a society that has a near total control of every aspect of the lives of the people in their nation and they have the worst air quality in the world. A question I have for these big government types, once the government has the ability to tell the people what kind of toilets they can buy, the kind of light bulbs, cars, soft drinks, clothing, the size of their house, the number of children, and on and on then what motivation would they have to care if the people don't like the air quality that their policies produced? If it takes smart people in government to tell us what to do to make our lives better then what is there to make sure that it is smart people that remain in government? Free elections perhaps? Freedom to speak?
The people in China are constantly lied to by the government, no doubt "for their own good" in the eyes of the government. The Chinese government claims this smog is the result of a natural event. They also know better because they have shutdown factories in response.
China is a polluted hell hole because they are going through an industrial revolution. It will remain a polluted hell hole until the people are free to choose who is in government and are free to speak out against their government. We've seen this before. History doesn't repeat but it does rhyme.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So at least one person living in denial had mod points to throw away.
This is what you get with low cost manufacturing!
Trump is right china is gaming the system.
Don't forget the thousands of coal mine deaths to fuel the factories that produce the inexpensive shit that the oligarchs want made there in order to sell cheaply in America.
And don't forget the Chinese multi-millionaires coming to the USA in throngs to invest their dirty profits buying up real-estate, which should be illegal.
If you think China is anything close to fair or treats people fair, watch this.
Well, in their defense, the old solid stuff is very heavy and they don't want to move it from apartment to apartment as they constantly move.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
But, but "China took the leadership on climate change many years ago" !
And I think its precisely because of twits like the woman from the UN in the video why Trump is saying fuck the Paris agreement because fuck all these twits.
... and blocking all the Chinese who are rich off the dirty slave-labor money from buying our real estate - and arresting the corrupt local governments that are facilitating their taking over our land.
A few months after Flint switched the water supply, the brass from General Motors went to the Governor (R) and complained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The Governor was appalled to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water. Which means that thatnks to the Governer while the children in Flint were drinking lead-filled water, GM was washing its cars with clean water
"Nixon created the EPA"
Ironic, isn't it?
In todays GOP he be a RINO with ethical standards too high to ever amount to anything.
More like 1950ies.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Trump is hobbling the EPA so badly that by the time he's done our smog will be so bad that we can't land airplanes either.
Not true - the smog will be so dense, you can land on top of it.
No, he's right. Unless your lips move when you read, encountering a homonymous mistake is jarring, as fluent reading is word or even phrase recognition, not letter recognition. If you don't care about what you're writing, why should anyone else?
Lead pipes are safe if the water is hard and alkaline; they effectively become stone pipes held in place by a lead sheath.
Then some silly sod who doesn't know they're there puts soft acidic water in them...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I find your segue into the anti-government rant a bit weirdly placed. Air quality is a textbook example of a "problem of the commons" situation - probably the biggest of them all because the atmosphere is literally one giant planet-spanning commons that everyone draws from.
And personally I cannot see a solution to the problem of the commons other than through goverment. Because even if people do realise they are also hurting themselves by polluting, it doesn't change the fact that a benefit from polluting less will be shared by everybody, while the costs of doing so are only applied to them. A rational actor will therefore always make the problem worse. Nobody wants to be the only guy on the block that spends double the money for oil heating, while still taking in 99% of pollution because everybody else is still on coal.
In a government, people can agree on reasonable restrictions that everybody needs to abide by to make the situation better. If you can outright make coal heating illegal, then people can expect 50% of pollution for double the money, and might even enjoy that change.
Now I do agree that there's a big caveat here and a possibility that such regulation would be overbearing, but I find it kind of silly to believe that we could have successfully made all the environmental progress of the past few decades in the west without the hammer of big government behind it.
China has learned from history. It saw how the west sacrificed millions of people's health for industrial progress, and decided that it was worth them doing the same thing. In fact a lot of people in the west make exactly the same argument - that it was worth polluting the world and burning all that fossil fuel to get the benefits we saw.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And personally I cannot see a solution to the problem of the commons other than through goverment. Because even if people do realise they are also hurting themselves by polluting, it doesn't change the fact that a benefit from polluting less will be shared by everybody, while the costs of doing so are only applied to them.
Someone that wants clean water to drink won't be shitting in the community well, right? It's not too hard to imagine people wanting to minimize pollution if you realize that these people that are doing the polluting are living in the same world as the rest of us.
It also doesn't take the "big hammer of government" to enforce policies against pollution. For example, think of a person that knows that lead in gasoline has the potential to do permanent damage to the brain development of their children. Is this person going to fill the minivan with leaded gas and take the family on a cross country road trip? I doubt it. This parent, if he/she cares about children at all will choose unleaded fuel or not going on the trip.
A less theoretical example, electric cars. Electric cars have all kinds of limitations compared to gas and diesel and yet they sell well. Why is that? They aren't mandated. Sure, they get some government support but no government agency is putting Tesla under the gun to make cars. They saw a market and sought to fill it. People see the benefit from electric cars, such as leaving a cleaner planet for their children.
What people seem to lose in the "tragedy of the commons" is that government is precisely not the solution. The solution is to privatize it. The tragedy of the shared pasture goes away if it is divided into parcels for the individual ranchers to graze. This way they see a direct loss to over grazing. If the pasture is put under control of an uninterested government then corruption and neglect set in. The government sees no direct loss on over grazing of the pasture, just as it sees no direct gain. A public official that is in office for only two years is going to be tempted to allow over grazing to keep everyone happy and leave the mess for the next official.
In cases where a common resource is more fleeting, like air compared to pasture land, the need for a government that must answer to the people is the second best choice to privatizing. The people that cannot merely shame the guy shitting in the well into not doing it any more can use the power of government to make it stop. If the government is a bunch of people that don't have to drink from the same well then don't expect a quick response, assuming you get a response at all. This is doubly so if the people in government weren't elected but selected by other people that are far from the problem.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
People aren't going to shit into the town well, but even there I am willing to question how far that is because they are aware of the consequences of their action, and not simply because they knew they'd get a beating from all the other townspeople. There'd certainly be people that would readily do so as long as there was another well somewhere else that they could drink out of.
But even that common sense you describe seems to go away really quickly as soon as the damage isn't completely obvious. In many places it's absolutely nothing unusual if you throw your trash into the same ocean the fish you're eating for dinner comes out of. Abstract that even further to ppms of invisible gases in a million cubic kilometers of air and even some people with doctorates seem to have trouble understanding the consequences.
Clearly, a dictatorship cannot handle this issue as well as a democracy can. The people in power are way too close to those few who benefit from lax environmental standards way more than they'd benefit from better environmental conditions. But as you noted, privatization is not an option for fleeting resources like water or air.
Flint (D) got its water from Detroit (D). They were building a pipeline to the lake. When the pipeline was 1 year from being complete Detroit (D) told them 'sign this 20 year contract for water or fuckoff, tomorrow.' They had little choice but get their water elsewhere. The city emergency manager (D, but appointed by R) got the water from a local river, intending to use it for a year. At the same time, a water company employee (D) took it on himself to stop using a chemical to seal lead pipes and prevent them from leaching.
Nope. You are leaving out how the original 30 year contract with Detroit expired in 1994. In theory, they were working through a multi-city/county agency to develop another water source. But twenty years later? Nope. Still not done. Detroit would have kept selling water. But somebody wanted to be seen to be doing something. So they switched.
No single employee made any such decision to not treat the water, 4 just got indicted for their failures, and the big story is how little their investigation went for the real meat. Lots of red flags and warnings to go around. All too many ignored.
Somehow this is someone else's fault. Cities run their own water companies, it was never Michigan's problem.
Somebody forgets that Michigan is the sovereign entity there, and the one party to the Great Lakes Water Compact, which was required to get water from Lake Huron and pipe it across the counties that border the lake to inland Genossee county.
Birmingham is a shithole, so is Vacaville. All bankrupt due to their own incompetence.
Yes, yes, that is the way you think. Blame someone for being in dire straits. That way you can feel only spite.
Not the same party as the Republican who gutted water sourcing to protect tax gifts to industry, that's for sure.
All Pollution Should be so Inconvenient, obvious, and visible. Then maybe we'd have less of it.
No, I'm a dick. You are a pussy, but if you continue to be so full of shit, you will turn into an asshole.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Chemical (primarily manufacturing)
https://earth.nullschool.net/#...
Particulate (coal)
https://earth.nullschool.net/#...
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?