Originally
posted by
Drow:
okay, let's play the game a little:
You get up in the morning, fill your kettle for a cup of morning coffee.
Your water is clean because some "leftists" fought for minimum water standards.
You get sick and have to take medications. They're safe to take because some stupid commie fought to ensure that agin, there's standards on safety for them, and that they work as advertised.
You prepare bacon and eggs for breakfast. Your food is safe to eat because some girly liberal fought for food safety standards.
You get dressed, go outside and take a breath of the morning air. It's relatively clean because some stupid tree hugging hippy fought to get pollution laws created.
You drive to work in a car that is safe, because some stupid liberal fought for minimum vehicle safety standards.
you get to work. you have a job with decent pay, conditions and leave, because stupid leftist unionists fought for those conditions.
the Right has been against all of these things since day dot.
I believe you are misportraying history on some counts here. What actually happened at least in terms of air quality is that the technology to clean it was invented and became affordable such as for industrial flue gas; Scrubbers, Electrostatic filters, Baghouse filters and SNCR/SCR. And for gasoline vehicles there were catalytic converters invented and in refineries new formulations allowed the reduction of sulphur and lead additives.
THIS is the reason that the legislation on these areas became possible to introduce, with those businesses able to adopt it without running out of business. Technological advances drove legislation for the most part, in terms of air quality, NOT the other way around.
This is what I work with, this is what I have a university education to a large degree.
When it comes to water safety, food safety, work safety and vehicle safety you may very well be right, or you may be wrong, I just dont know since I dont have the kind of experience in those fields. But if I would venture a guess you are overestimating the role of politics in these advances. Not to say it doesn't have a role to play at all.
When a technology is ready, scaleable and affordable, politics can go in and incentivice or in some circumstances force businesses to adopt it. This is fine. This is how its supposed to happen if the technology creates important advantages for society as a whole. The issue is that some politicians, often on the left, decide to forego this order, and try to wish technology into existance and legislate that it has to be used long before it is ready. This often pulls the rug out from underneath industries which may move, avoid expansion, downsize or go bankrupt and have their competitors abroad take over their market share. This is just bad politics, and its usually bad for the environment as well in many cases.