Monday, January 30, 2006
Pollution...
This week, mostly, I want to dedicate to the silliest bit of regulation ever promulgated...
But let's leave aside the science and just consider the politics here. Smoking indoors anywhere but the home is already banned in California, so what do we gain here? Well, we gain two things - Firstly the Air Resources Board gets a piece of the smoking regulation pie, where previosuly is was strictly a health department issue. The ARB gains funding and power.
It's this later gain on the ARB's part that is really scary. Given that smoking is so heavily controlled already what power will they have and how will they use it? Well, this gives them power to intrude in your home. Secondly, it means that even outdoor smoking now may be subject to really silly stuff like vapor control systems and so forth.
But mostly what this does is accrue power when a simple ban would be more effective. But if they just banned smoking no one would get any power. Under the guise of not restricting freedom, they take an enormous amount of freedom away.
I really hate this (I am not a smoker by the way) it is the triumph of politics over common sense, forget science. Given that we are already regulating "cattle emissions" will it be long before they come after my farts?
And now the reason for that "mostly."
California has become the first US state to classify second-hand tobacco smoke as a toxic air pollutant.Evidence regarding the health effects of second hand smoke in non-enclosed situations is extremely thin. The linked article compares it to diesel exhaust but the fact of the matter is there is so little coming from the average ten smokers, as compared to the average diesel truck that it is a silly comparison.
But let's leave aside the science and just consider the politics here. Smoking indoors anywhere but the home is already banned in California, so what do we gain here? Well, we gain two things - Firstly the Air Resources Board gets a piece of the smoking regulation pie, where previosuly is was strictly a health department issue. The ARB gains funding and power.
It's this later gain on the ARB's part that is really scary. Given that smoking is so heavily controlled already what power will they have and how will they use it? Well, this gives them power to intrude in your home. Secondly, it means that even outdoor smoking now may be subject to really silly stuff like vapor control systems and so forth.
But mostly what this does is accrue power when a simple ban would be more effective. But if they just banned smoking no one would get any power. Under the guise of not restricting freedom, they take an enormous amount of freedom away.
I really hate this (I am not a smoker by the way) it is the triumph of politics over common sense, forget science. Given that we are already regulating "cattle emissions" will it be long before they come after my farts?
And now the reason for that "mostly."
Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend.Let me translate this for you -- Global warming is a natural process, the planet warms and cools quite routinely, and has done so since long before we were here, but now that we have used that phenomena to garner as much wealth transfer and political power to ourselves as we think we can, we need to come up with a scenario that will allow us to
- Save Face
- Have a ready excuse when all our "efforts" fail
- create enough panic to garner more wealth transfer and political power before we are done.
This is so transparent it would be pathetic if so many people weren't buying it. The global warming discussion is turning into patent medicince sales, or maybe psychics.
Related Tags: pollution, air toxics, Air Resources Board, secondhand smoke, global warming, tipping point, patent medicine
