Well done, Pennsylvania:
Just a week after repealing a policy requiring an environmental assessment of Marcellus Shale gas well permit proposals in state parks, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has announced it is suspending and reconsidering key air pollution controls governing the drilling industry.
The latest policy changes, detailed in today’s Pennsylvania Bulletin where official state actions are listed, would eliminate a December guideline that regulates emissions from all well operations in a region together, which could result in stricter pollution controls than if the wells are regulated individually.
For those of you keeping track, the new wingnut Governor in PA earlier suspended regulations regarding the dumping of gas drilling wastewater into rivers and streams and has suspended the regulation of air pollutants. I’m sure I’m just being hyperbolic and there is actually a very well known free market solution that is rooted in Hayekian principles to address the regulation of private polluters while the public regulatory arm unilaterally disarms. I’ll have to check with Reason magazine, or maybe Sullivan has found a new Mitch Daniels policy that would address this.
Up next- Governor Corbett informs Pennsylvanians that the DEP and gas companies will personally visit every home in PA and shit on your living room floor, kick your dog, and pour Benzene in your soda.
Tom Levenson
Just came back from a trip to UT where I learned of the very depressing views there about peak oil and the future of fossil-fueled energy supplies. This kind of stuff, trying to extract the last BTU from that dinosaur wine, is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
We’re going to end up shivering in the dark in a wholly toxic environment if we don’t get our asses together, and it sure looks like the Keystoners won’t be leading the way.
gnomedad
Attention, “libertarians”:
POLLUTION. IS. THEFT.
That is all.
JGabriel
Ah, yes. That’s the Pennsylvania I grew up in.
John Cole @ Top:
Or, as they like to call it in PA, a return to the good old days.
.
Dave
Yup…Republicans and Democrats are EXACTLY ALIKE. Thank you, feckless idiots who stayed home to “teach Obama a lesson”…
R-Jud
With all that benzene floating around, they’ll be calling it the Leukemiastone State soon.
pragmatism
the tragedy of the commons, indeed.
Mr Furious
There’s a host of wingnut policies that I’m willing to say, “fucking suck on it you jackass voters!” but this type of environmental destruction is the exception. The rivers etc that these short term greed-grabs destroy will take untold decades to recover, and will have impacts on everything from fishin to drinking supplies for hundreds if miles around.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
For anyone who thinks my earlier comment about the good old days in PA was glib and cynical, I’d like to point out that Pennsylvania’s various waterways, especially the Susquehanna, have only begun to recover in the past two decades from the previous more than a century’s worth of acidification and pollution from coalmine wastewater dumping.
Corbett’s suspension of such regulations will doom a recovery that has barely begun.
.
GregB
Noted non-interventionist Col. Pat Lang has released a statement.
Now is the time to intervene in Libya.
Davis X. Machina
Now, let’s not be so negative, and one-sided, and take a balanced look at this.
You did get to keep your guns, didn’t you?
Sko Hayes
I grew up in Philly and remember driving over the Walt Whitman bridge, and the smell from the river would take your breath away. There were times when the Schuylkill River would be green because of the pollutants.
We went down to Ocean City, New Jersey, and spent the summers down there, and they used to dump the sewage right into the ocean.
Corbett is taking PA back to the good old days.
The only light I can take from this is that another year or two of these Republican governors giving tax breaks to millionaires and tripling health care payments for public workers, while slashing services to the public and slashing corporate taxes at the same time, they’ll be ready, willing and able to vote for Democrats in 2012.
Bill Section 147
You should have noted that any complaints about this justifiable and necessary dumping would be interpreted as you trying to invoke Sharia Law.
freelancer
Three Mile Island 2: The Gassening (2012)
cmorenc
The aggressive arrogance of these assholes are only exceeded by their sheer short-sighted stupidity and fuck-you greed. If it was only the kind of stupidity which was harmful to themselves and only the kind of greed that potentially impoverished themselves when they overreached, I could put up with their obnoxiousness. However, they are unfortunately inclined strongly toward precisely toward insistent pursuit of precisely the kinds of arrogant stupidity and greed that leaves enormous, irreparable harm to a wide net of other people in its wake.
jl
Dear Mr. Cole,
“a very well known free market solution that is rooted in Hayekian principles to address the regulation of private polluters”
I think the above is wrong. It is the Coase Theorem. If the social value of your water were greater than that to the gas industry, you would have gone out and bargained with them, and coughed up the cash to secure the property rights so you water would not be disturbed.
You did not.
Simple.
Economics is so smart!
These parasite lesser people are losers who always whine in an attempt to leech of the productive in the US economy.
jl
Please note that my previous comment contained snark.
General Stuck
When the shit backs up into the house, and Aunt Betty delivers a baby with eight legs and compound eyes, Uncle Fester can cling tightly to his guns, or have one for dinner.
Turgidson
For some reason, Cole and Doug’s sarcastic dismantlings of the Village idiots’ “Hayekian Principles ftw!” swooning make me laugh every time. Even when I know it’s coming.
slag
@gnomedad: What makes you think libertarians have anything against theft? As long as it’s theft from the right people, that is.
cathyx
I guess that this explains why Pa. is ranked #5 of the top ten polluters in the country.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/23/top-state-co2-emissions-polluters_n_826753.html#s244389&title=5_Pennsylvania
Mnemosyne
The best part: the goddamned thing actually caught fire yesterday, but apparently that’s no reason not to go full speed ahead with deregulation! Free market FTW!
freelancer
OT – Congrats on your nuptials Mrs. Kate Walsh-Grammer! I see nothing but a bright future for you and Kelsey!
schrodinger's cat
It seems to be a race to the bottom amongst the GOP governors.
cathyx
@schrodinger’s cat: We narrowly escaped having a republican governor here in Oregon. A former basketball player with no governing experience.
Davis X. Machina
@schrodinger’s cat: Hey, do you want to govern, or do you want to win elections? because you can’t do both.
I believe I have a Mr Coke for you on line two….
fucen tarmal
hey everyone thought we were wusses with “you’ve got a friend in pennsylvania”, and i admit, it is kind of weak…
wait til we have “pennsylvania is on FIRE” on our license plates, even truckers will get out of our way.
this can only lead to good things.
jl
@General Stuck:
In crisis lies opportunity, of which of fittest and ablest among us will take advantage, and make a very nice living (and the parasite losers will whine).
Young man, I see you have a promising future in our brave new world, and I look forward to reading your household tips for contemporary living column, in the near future.
Little Boots
so many wingnut governors? how did we get here? How do we make it stop?
RSR
It’s so frustrating that the whole industry moved forward under Rendell’s twilight/Dem assembly for a pittance of revenue. No one could’of predicted future GOP administrations would gut environmental oversight.
AkaDad
If you don’t allow drilling companies to pollute, you clearly hate freedom.
Little Boots
okay, now this is a weird and deeply annoying thing about this little burg of Madison. So much is happening right here, so much drama and so much that is really important to our nation. And yet, every night our local progressive radio station, the Mic, 92.1 FM, switches away from Randi Rhodes to some kind of fucking Badger sports. What the fuckety, fuckety fuck?
ppcli
@freelancer: Ahem: that’s “Kayte” Walsh-Grammar, not “Kate”. “Kate” is the way the woman who’s marrying into the British royal family spells her name, but the classy spelling is “Kayte”, as everyone in L.A. knows.
Linda Featheringill
@Tom Levenson:
Hey! One of our Famous Posters actually mentioned peak oil! Hooray!
We are actually going to have to deal with this. And depending on the Tooth Fairy to invent something wonderful to take the place of petroleum doesn’t look like a good idea to me.
So . . . . if you were to talk more about peak oil, it would make a happy old lady. :-)
kdaug
What the fuck is wrong with these parasites?
Is it an Ozymandias complex? Can they not picture the man cutting down the last tree on Easter Island, to roll out his biggest, greatest stone head?
This planet has shaken off many parasitic species before, and surely will again. Why do they imagine they’re different?
I get that they don’t give a fuck if the rest humanity dies off, but do they really think their gated communities will protect them?
Little Boots
@Linda Featheringill:
We cannot deal with the fact that we are climate changing our planet into oblivion. we cannot deal with the fact that peak oil will dramatically change our way of life. we cannot deal with anything, really. all we can do is spin, and counterspin.
RSR
Woo, all that western PA river dumping will flow down to you John.
You’re welcome.
http://www.pserie.psu.edu/seagrant/ais/images/ws_ohiomap.gif
freelancer
@ppcli:
I know, I realized too late and didn’t get to edit. (It works now if you open up Edit in a new tab, weirdly.)
Mark S.
Doing a five second google search on libertarian + pollution turned up this:
There you go.
Wait, who has property rights on the air? Rivers and streams?To conclude, “The greens and leftists have NO solutions to the problems of pollution. Libertarians, on the other hand, do.” Game, set and match.
Little Boots
@Mark S.:
that has the enormous advantage of telling everyone that nobody has to do shit. that is a winner, politically.
jl
@kdaug:
“I get that they don’t give a fuck if the rest humanity dies off, but do they really think their gated communities will protect them?”
Yes, they do.
Or they are in denial. The Teabaggers in my family have gone beyond agnatology an into an alternative reality where everything they want is just there for the plucking were it not for the Damn Democrats.
For example, I have an uncle and aunt who have bought the Palinverse hook line and sinker. In their world, the ground beneath our feet in the US is a mere thin crust floating on an endless sea of oil, if only the Damn Democrats would get out of the way.
I’ve given up arguing with them on some things and just let it be. They are, strangely enough, on the right side in terms of voting integrity (ain’t need them fancy voting machines, why not just make everybody show up and writ it down on paper?) and racism among the reactionaries, so I encourage them along those lines.
ppcli
@freelancer: Edit in a new tab, eh? Thanks for the tip.
Edit: Hey! It works. This is sort of like that moment in 2001: A Space Odyssey when the ape finds the tool in front of the monolith. Life will never be the same.
cathyx
Here is the republican thinking on this pollution thing in a nutshell.
I’ll be dead before it affects me and my life, and I want cheap energy because it’s my money and I don’t want to pay more for regulations. With regards to my grandchildren, I can die with peace of mind because there isn’t enough pollution to affect their life, pollution doesn’t hurt people. Rush Limbaugh said so.
Little Boots
This is one of those cases where, sadly, democracy does not work. Most people want to be told that everything is basically fine and nobody has to do anything. that side has a huge advantage, politically. I wish I knew an answer to that.
jl
edit broken and typed too fast. Sorry. Hope folks can figure out previous comment.
General Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
Hell, growing up in coal country, until leaving, I never knew that a bath full of water wasn’t naturally blood red from the acid water bringing the oodles of iron out of solution. Nor having the house shake from a gazillion pounds of ANFO detonated on a hill the next hollow over, not to mention dodging flash floods from sediment ponds breaching. A little vapor fire is nothing to get hung about.
Linda Featheringill
@Little Boots:
Ship of Fools.
jl
@freelancer: Yes, thanks for the tip. It works on ‘open in new window’ mode too.
Little Boots
@Linda Featheringill:
It does seem that way. I’m in a pissy mood, in case that isn’t apparent, and the truth is I feel pretty confident that we will win in Madison, but when I think about what we’re doing here, how we got to this point, it really, truly pisses me off. The absolutely slavish devotion to the interests of the rich in this country is so pathetic. We will literally kill ourselves rather than inconvenience some millionaire. It is ridiculous.
thomas Levenson
@Linda Featheringill: Working on it. Add it to the list of something I know little enough about to know how little I know, and hence how likely I am to make a fool of myself, and hence how slowly I have to post on it…
Mark S.
@General Stuck:
Ingrate. Those benevolent coal companies were making sure you got your iron. You want anemia?
Dennis SGMM
It isn’t as if the handwriting wasn’t on the wall decades ago. The oil embargo back in nineteen-fucking-seventy-three showed us exactly what happens when the spigot is turned off. Instead of launching a Manhattan Project level of of R&D to enable energy independence both political parties sold out and allowed Big Oil to fuck up every last thing that stands between them and anything that will burn. This is nothing less than a catastrophic failure of government.
Little Boots
@Dennis SGMM:
but, but, Carter looked funny in that sweater. Yeah, let’s vote for the dunce in the suit. That’ll show em. whoever em is.
SensesFail
@Dave:
This.
MikeJ
@Mark S.:
Now google libertarian + tort reform.
jenn
This is just insane. How are they getting around the federal Clean Water Act? Not that long ago, I don’t think they’d have been able to do this. But then again, I seem to recall a court case taken to the Supreme Court about the Clean Water Act a couple of years ago, that dramatically changed the waterways that qualified – with Swing Vote Kennedy making some sort of weird contortion that didn’t end up gutting it as far as the other Republican Supremes wanted, but made it more difficult to make the call in the field about which waterways were subject to CWA and which weren’t, but I thought that was more an issue for wetlands than streams and rivers.
Triassic Sands
Apparently, the majority of people in PA, OH, IN, and WI, to name but a few states, are eager to breathe polluted air. That’s how they voted.
@Dennis SGMM:
It is that, but it is something more. It’s a catastrophic failure of the people. And our system.
Little Boots
@Triassic Sands:
and that truly worries me.
khead
It’s not just PA.
WV is open for fracking.
Violet
From Eric Kleefeld’s Twitter feed:
They’re moving the Madison protesters out of the capital building.
Dennis SGMM
@Triassic Sands:
You want stupid? California, suffocating under a mountain of debt doesn’t charge the oil companies so much as a nickle in extraction fees. Our state Assembly has an ironclad two-thirds majority requirement to pass nearly anything and so we languish. That the US Senate now seems to operate in the same way does not bode well for our future.
frosty
@thomas Levenson: Well, Peak Oil is basically pretty simple. First principle: you can’t have infinite growth in a world with finite resources.
Next thing to ask yourself (a tag line from an Oil Drum commenter) Are humans smarter than yeast?
Beer: Yeast eat up every bit of sugar in the wort, then die when there’s no more food left.
Wine: Yeast eat and eat and eat the sugar, then die in their waste products (alcohol) when the concentration gets too high.
Fun thoughts on a Friday night. Think I’ll go get a drink.
gnomedad
@Mark S.:
Went to the site — holy shit, he’s not snarking!
RSR
Hasn’t “We’re on fire” been Centralia’s motto for a few decades now?
Just Some Fuckhead
@GregB: Can’t we at least wait for the Libyan Curveball?
Little Boots
@gnomedad:
I have the terrible feeling he’ll be head of EPA in a couple of years. That’s what we the people want to hear.
BR
@Tom Levenson:
This is something I feel like needs to be discussed daily. It’s so much more important than all the other shit in our daily discourse, be it on blogs like this or elsewhere. But yet most folks are unaware or otherwise don’t like to talk about it because it’s too negative.
gnomedad
The internet will make libertarian solutions to pollution feasible. When a polluting vehicle drives past you, your cell phone will automatically initiate a micro-lawsuit against the driver. Judgment will be rendered by a Halliburton judicial expert system, and the frivolous lawsuit fine will be automatically deducted from your paycheck.
MikeJ
@gnomedad: Suing people for polluting hasn’t worked well historically. It took over twenty years for Exxon Valdez to go through the courts, and many people were severed from the class action because they were dead by the time it was over.
S. cerevisiae
@frosty: I guess we’ll all find out.
MikeJ
@S. cerevisiae: Eponysterical.
opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland
@jl: Sort of along the lines of a relative who commented about global warming that he’d just turn up his AC.
Little Boots
@opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland: well, at least he has a plan. unlike the rest of this country.
trollhattan
I worked nearly fifteen years in environmental engineering cleanup projects and can’t adequately describe how vastly more expensive it is to remove contaminants from groundwater than preventing the contamination to begin with. What’s occurring in Pennsylvania (and New York and Colorado and Wyoming and…) is indefensible.
And these bastards do. Not. Care.
jwb
@Little Boots: Yes, sports, they will be the death of us. It’s what feeds the tube and keeps people from simply turn off the cable they would otherwise care less about.
trollhattan
@Dennis SGMM:
Prop 26 last November screwed us bigtime. 2/3 vote now required to levy new fees.
Sigh
jl
@opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland:
The really irritating thing about some of my family’s teabaggers is their politicization of everything. One particular strident liberal in my family used to have that title, but they have been left far back in the teabaggers’ dust.
Samples:
me, during recent warm spell here : Nice day for February. Warm. Good day for a hike.
teabagger relative: Awwwwwww, thaaaaat damn global warming is a bunch of buuuullllssshhhhiiiiiiiit these Democrats peddle.
me, on a trip: Funny, the trees look healthier on this side of the mountains. Anybody else think so? Wonder if it’s pollution or maybe a different kind of tree.
teabagger relative: Awwwwwww, thaaaaat damn global warming is a bunch of buuuullllssshhhhiiiiiiiit these Democrats peddle.
You can’t even talk about the damn weather anymore, unusual or not.
kdaug
@Dennis SGMM:
Don’t forget the press conference to publicly display the pulling of the solar panels off the roof of the White House.
I believe that’s called a “tell”.
Wilson Heath
In post-Soviet Russia, air breathes you!
Little Boots
@jwb:
The Packers are unionized. there’s that.
Jennifer
Well, it could be worse.
They could shit in your soda, kick the living room floor and pour Benzene in your dog.
Mr. Blink
@jl: I have no idea if you are being sarcastic, or just stupid. Big companies with lots of money buys property rights, because they end up making a profit from / because of the land they purchased. They have deep pockets, can afford it, and may end up getting a return later. (Even though they may end up fucking up the environment around them. But who cares, right? It’s all about profit.)
So what you are proposing is one of us dirty hippies buy up all the land, so the fuck-tards can’t use it, but really not hope to get any payment back in return? It doesn’t work that way. The greedy assholes will win every time. Our only hope is regulation and severe penalties. That’s what I want my god damn tax money going to, which is why I vote non-republican.
Nellcote
from the article cited:
also.too.
maya
@Linda Featheringill:
Kinda reminds me of that old Marty Robbin’s tune;
They still talk about the stranger with,
The peak oil on his lips….
jwb
@Little Boots: Oh, it’s not the sports per se. It’s that sports are what pay the bills for the media and convince people to keep the cable—and it’s cable (well, TV actually) that’s the killer. Bread and circuses and all that.
Triassic Sands
@Little Boots:
Ah, Little Boots, I fear you should be worried. The signs are not good. In 2012, the GOP is almost certain to take control of the Senate. Assuming Obama is able to hold on to the White House, we’ll see then if the president can spell “veto.” I imagine he will be faced with an avalanche of the most vile, wrongheaded, and shortsighted legislation any president has ever had to consider.
Triassic Sands
@Dennis SGMM:
Dennis, you side-windin’ polecat, I live in Washington State and as when I lived in Colorado, despite all the obvious evidence that California has ruined itself, Washingtonians are now busy imitating Californians. We, and by “we” I mean not me, passed a 2/3 requirement to raise any tax or fee. Our governor threw in the towel and announced an ALL CUTS budget, so the war on the poor goes on.
Nellcote
@jwb:
If it’s any help the NFL bosses are threatening a lockout.
Little Boots
@Triassic Sands: that sounds about right. and while the fact that John Boener is going to have to stand up there and say some of the stupidest things ever heard in national politics, without believing a word of it, is kind of entertaining, it does not make up for the rancid shit that is going to flow from the capital.
Mr. Blink
OK JL, I read a couple of your other posts, and I think you were actually being sarcastic. My bad. Too late to edit my post…
jwb
@Nellcote: The lockout will certainly hurt Fox, which is not a bad thing, but it’s more than just professional football. It’s the whole sports entertainment complex—and college sports is as big a part of that as the professional sports.
Linda Featheringill
@BR:
It looks like peak oil got a response from several people. Could be some interest in it.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Little Boots: But…But…Jesus will come back and create us a new heaven and a new Earth….It says here in the King James Bible. So it is Ok for us to trash this old one. ;-)
RSR
hey, timely:
Natural Gas Industry Tried To Get Documentary “Gasland” Disqualified From Oscars
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2011/02/25/industry-tried-to-get-documentary-gasland-disqualified-from-oscars/
Little Boots
@Mr Stagger Lee:
and make everybody be high. or is that Bob Marley? I’m always getting those two mixed up.
Little Boots
sheets. is that a thing? am I mixing up web sites?
Dennis SGMM
@Triassic Sands:
LOL! Thanks for the appellation. I haven’t been so honorably appelated in years.
Scamp Dog
@Mr. Blink: Given that the snark often isn’t that different from actual libertarian rhetoric, it’s hard to tell sometimes.
Triassic Sands
@Little Boots:
Nothing puzzles me more than how much of what he says a guy like Boehner actually believes. On the one hand, believing the nonsense he spews requires a person be monumentally stupid. Admittedly, ideology, like religion, can make a person really dumb, but it’s not automatic, and cause and effect are uncertain. Does believing fundamental religion make one stupid or does one simply have to be stupid to believe it?
On the other hand, the degree of cynicism and dishonesty necessary for a person to act as Boehner does, if he doesn’t believe what he’s saying (and doing), is mind-boggling. If Boehner is just pretending, I would expect him to slip up more often, i.e., inadvertently reveal that he doesn’t believe what he’s saying.
Stupid or dishonest? Or is it both? Pushed to choose, I think I’d opt for both.
Triassic Sands
@Dennis SGMM:
You’re quite welcome, I’m sure.
Little Boots
@Triassic Sands:
I think Boehner is really, truly indifferent to all this crap. I think he just wants to get to the bar at five. Of all the speakers I’ve seen in the past 20 years, I think he’s the most perfectly cynical. he is just so bored by the ideologues, it seems, but he depends on them and he’ll let them steer him any way they want.
Mark S.
@Little Boots:
And if there’s one thing Boehner knows, it’s always five o’clock somewhere.
jl
@Mr. Blink: Should have put a snark tag on the Coase Theorem post. I was making fun of how the eactionaries apply economic theory.
jomo
The stakes are horrifically high. Between NY and PA we are talking about virtually the entire water supply for the tri-state area: a metropolis of 16 million people.
Cain
@cathyx:
We’ve been getting squeakers every election. Luckily for us, Multinomah County saves our bacon every time.
cain
Montysano
@Little Boots:
Perfect.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@freelancer:
Fix’t! :)
A friend my wife went to school with is a full metal religious winger who believes that we can do whatever we want to the earth because gawd gave it to us to use as we see fit. That and by the time we fuck it up royally Jeebus will come and save her and her cults asses while making everyone remaining behind regret that the Big Sky Daddy ever made us by waging war then leaving everyone to suffer in hell for eternity.
It truly warms her heart to know this truth. Truly.
But she’s a loving, compassionate person. Really. Just ask her and she will tell you that. I add “fucking batshit crazy” to that so it describes her a bit better.
Jebediah
@frosty:
Maybe that is all we are – some aliens are watching us and wishing we would hurry up and finish fermenting already so they can drink the tasty, tasty earth ale.
Shit, I hope we are at least a top-shelf brew. Naw, we’re prolly tapswill.
Pat
Elections have consequences, motherfuckers! and this country will never wake the fuck up!
dan
We need cheap fuel, and I don’t live in Pennsylvania, so drill baby drill.
themann1086
I tried to get… uh…. that guy…. Dan Ono-something… elected. Sadly he was a terrible campaigner and a stupid democrat… I voted for Hoeffel in the primaries.
jayjaybear
@themann1086: Ditto on voting for Onorato. I shudder to think about state employee contract negotiations this year. We’ll probably be lucky if we’re not paying the state to let us work…
terry
yeah, don’t blame me. i voted for onorato. even though he really is a douche, too.
(on behalf of sane Pennsylvania, I’m sorry.)