
H.R.861 – To Terminate the Environmental Protection Agency - uptown
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/861/text
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notadoc
What a stupid idea.

Anyone in favor of this should have to spend a few months in Dehli, Beijing,
Chongqing, or even worse, a true industrial city or district in either
country. The rivers and creeks are full of visible toxic waste, sewage and
garbage, the air is so foul and acrid that almost everyone wears masks, your
eyes can burn from who-knows-what chemicals in the air, water is trucked in
from hundreds of miles away from clean sources (and sometimes imported from
different countries entirely). No, that's not fog, that's pollution. No that's
not a cloudy day, that's pollution. After a few days with enough time spent
outside, you develop congestion and a minor sensation of having a cold, and
when you blow your nose a bunch of black and brown soot comes out. But hey,
you can pay slave labor wages to make cheap disposable crap for oversees
consumer markets!

~~~
splintercell
> Anyone in favor of this should have to spend a few months in Dehli, Beijing,
> Chongqing, or even worse, a true industrial city or district in either
> country.

I wish people understood something about environment concerns, the action of
using cleaner methods is a 'cost', and this cost is only worth paying when the
people behind it are willing to pay the cost.

These countries aren't dirty because they don't have an EPA, they are dirty
because they are making their lives better and for the time being they don't
care about spending huge cost on keeping things clean.

Consider it to be like writing tests for your code. Writing tests for your
code is a cost and not every team is willing to pay it, even though they
should. If govt creates a National Testing Agency in 1987 which forced teams
to have certain code coverage and tests then it would have faced major
opposition from most people. In 2007 even fewer teams wrote tests, and in 1997
very few teams wrote tests. Similarly in 2027 testing standards would be a lot
bigger norm where the presumption would be that every component is fully
covered and tested.

When West had its industrial revolution it was pretty dirty, but it was
acceptable to most people because their standards of living were going up
exponentially high. Sooner or later after reaching a plateau of progress, they
realized that at this point they don't care about increase in standards of
living via goods as much as they care about other things like cleaner
environment etc.

People in India and China currently don't care so much about environment
because of the magnitudes of progress they are seeing. Soon enough they will
start valuing cleaner air and water.

~~~
sammydavis
I strongly disagree with your statement. Many people in India and China would
be happy to have cleaner skies. Especially in China, they know that they have
too many polluting factories, and their economy has gotten to the point that
they can afford to have treatment of the exhaust - but many companies pay off
regulators as that is cheaper than treating their waste products.

Some of the very poorest of the poor would be more open to dirty industry so
they can have a more affluent lifestyle, but it is not something they all
want. And in the US, we didn't have people willingly trading off more
pollution for better jobs - there just wasn't an easy way to stop the
polluters.

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marak830
Look I'm an Aussie living in Japan, but I know what the EPA is.

Someone please tell me this won't pass. I really hope not, and I hope this is
a moon shot of a bill, as I know how much my original country and my new
country follow the US.

~~~
showerst
Honestly you never know these days, but it's not a bill from an influential
rep, has few cosponsors, and so far has no important movement, so right now
it's unlikely. I suspect that the republicans in congress understand that the
correct way to get what they want is to have the president order the EPA to
roll back tons of regulations, not to literally undo hundreds of thousands at
once without review.

Something many people (even Americans) don't realize about the US system is
that thousands of bills get introduced every session that have zero chance of
passing. They're just to score political points with the home crowd.

~~~
marak830
Ahh thanks for the reply.

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tyingq
More of the backstory, including excerpts of the email that the bill sponsor
sent to his peers:

Unfortunately, includes auto-play video, but:
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-to-abolish-
epa_us_5...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-to-abolish-
epa_us_5890e638e4b02772c4e9c552)

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tptacek
This came up last week. Same thing then as now: this is a House bill by a
32-year-old first-term Congressperson from Florida. Any Congressperson can
write any bill they want. Some of them do, hoping to get press coverage. If we
had a story for every whackjob go-nowhere bill from the House, the front page
would be nothing but this stuff.

The EPA isn't going anywhere.

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captainmuon
This comment is completely incidental (because I don't have the energy to
comment on the sad content), but does anybody else find the typography and
style of these completely bizarre? It looks stuck in the 19th century, and it
is very confusing. "A BILL" is much larger than the actual title.

I know one reason for legal ideosyncrasies is that they need a very specific
and precise language, and form, to leave no ambiguities. But then the contents
of the bill is just one line, "The Environmental Protection Agency shall
terminate on December 31, 2018". I'd love them to propertly terminate their
cables, or maybe terminate a cockroach, on that given day.

And, don't they have to make it a lot more specific, like what happens to the
buildings, the people, ongoing contracts, what older bills have to be amended,
and so on? Or is this just an order to some other branch to draft an
appropriate law? I find the US government system sometimes very confusing.

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ENTP
Question for my American cousins: In your opinion, what percentage of fellow
Americans see themselves as part of the global community? I've read a few
comments on HN on many different topics along the lines of "but that wouldnt
work in the states because we are different". I'm genuinely curious how
disconnected from the rest of the planet people feel/are. Thanks in advance.

~~~
equalunique
I have met families in rural West Virginia who for generstions haven't
ventured outside of the country. They trace their ancestry back to before
1776. The connection with the global community does not seem real to them.
Take this as an extreme example of what some rual communities are like.

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kerhackernews
Republicans will never be held accountable by their voters, ever.

