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America Is Backsliding Toward Its Most Polluted Era

(www.theatlantic.com)
150 points pmags | 4 comments | 10 Apr 25 12:48 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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RajT88 ◴[10 Apr 25 13:12 UTC] No.43643433[source]▶
I've observed this weird cognitive dissonance with outdoorsmen, since I am quite fond of fishing.

They tend to be a pretty hardcore MAGA bunch, but also don't like pollution because it messes up their sport. When you ask them about stuff like this (how can you support someone who pretty openly wants to mess up your pastime?), they get mad or change the subject.

I get it - people are complicated and can care about many things at once. Nobody likes it when someone is seemingly poking at their belief systems. Still - you'd think it'd give them some kind of pause.

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rayiner ◴[10 Apr 25 13:48 UTC] No.43643736[source]▶
It's not just that people care about many things at once, but they have different assumptions about how much real-world output will result from a particular political input.

For example, this article is about air pollution. Trump rolled back a number of Obama-era air pollution rules in 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/04/trump-em.... But there was no corresponding increase in air pollution in the subsequent six years: https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=c2....

So your friends simply don't believe that rolling back particular environmental regulations will meaningfully reduce the quality of the environment. It's similar to how liberals downplay how much reshoring of industry will result from the Trump administration's tariffs.

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1. supplied_demand ◴[10 Apr 25 14:31 UTC] No.43644182[source]▶
==It's similar to how liberals downplay how much reshoring of industry will result from the Trump administration's tariffs.==

I haven't seen a coherent explanation or estimate of impact made by the administration. If a strategy that estimates the amount of reshoring exists, I'd love to see it. The constant back-and-forth on tariffs makes it seems more like the whims of one individual rather than a coherent plan for "reshoring of industry."

In your comments, you seem to continually give one side the benefit of the doubt, but use a completely different set of rules when discussing the other side.

It even seems to come out in your analysis as your source shows that 2023 saw the most days of unhealthy PM2.5 levels since 2012. It went from 724 in 2017, to 822 in 2023. That is a 13.5% increase. It appears you might be falling into the same trap you warn everyone else about.

Edited to add: On tariffs, Republican Senator Ron Johnson admits, “I still don’t know exactly what his total strategy is.” [0] Yet, you expect everyday liberals to have some nuanced view of the policy.

[0] https://x.com/mkraju/status/1910078814975050012

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2. chneu ◴[10 Apr 25 15:57 UTC] No.43645216[source]▶
>In your comments, you seem to continually give one side the benefit of the doubt, but use a completely different set of rules when discussing the other side.

One set of rules for thee, different set for everyone else.

3. supplied_demand ◴[10 Apr 25 17:32 UTC] No.43646205[source]▶
==There’s like five Trump republicans on HN==

Neither true nor relevant to the comment. The comment was about the propensity to demand more from one side than the other. In this case, you put the onus on Democrats to positively interpret a Republican administration policy that Republican politicians can't even articulate.

==after being between 466 and 657 between 2019 and 2022. Did Trump’s policies cause air quality to get better and then suddenly get worse halfway through the Biden administration?==

No, COVID did that, as other people have explained in this thread. Let's be more specific to try and remove the COVID outliers:

- PM2.5 unhealthy days fell 41% during Obama's term (1,195 unhealthy days in 2008 down to 702 days in 2016).

- PM2.5 unhealthy days increased by 9% from 2017 to 2018, after Trump changed the rules.

It should also be noted that wildfires can have a large impact on PM2.5 levels.

4. mdhb ◴[11 Apr 25 06:37 UTC] No.43651087[source]▶
The lies we tell ourselves in order to justify the bullshit.