On 2005-09-01, Jay Honeck wrote:
Now that their short-sightedness is hurting everyone, badly -- worldwide --
maybe you'll realize just how much harm environmental extremists have done.

Short sightedness? Leaving everyone to freely pollute would be short
sighted. This disaster, although on a massive scale, will be a mere blip
compared to the permanent damage that allowing unfettered pollution
would cause. Perhaps you ought to move to China, where there are few
environmental regulations. A friend of mine lived there. The stories he
told would make your wossnames spin. It is NASTY living in a polluted
cesspool. Of course, it's not in your back yard so you probably don't
mind so much so long as your fuel is cheap. So what if refinery workers
are being poisoned and so what if residents of Texas City have a life
expectency twenty years shorter than they do now. Having lived in that
area, I can tell you that the environmental regulations need
*tightening* or the whole area will be a toxic wasteland for our
children and grandchildren to spend billions on cleaning up.

You know I didn't need the marker beacon to tell me when I was over the
OM for Galveston on the ILS 13? You knew the OM was coming because you
could smell this foul, sickening smell from the refineries. Any time
there was a temperature inversion, the air turned green. The otherwise
gorgeous blue winter days in Texas were marred by the stench of the
refineries in Pasadena. It used to be worse - the DE I flew with for my
instrument and glider rides told me what the sickness rates used to be
like and the rivers devoid of fish. Rivers that would periodically catch
fire. Xylene showers. Industrial accidents that were so common no one
even blinked.

I've lived in one of America's most polluted cities - I dread to think
what the place would have been like without the fairly weak
environmental regulations that were in place. It is NOT impossible for
oil companies to build more refineries. I think Mike Rappoport explained
it pretty well already. Much of the 'self imposed' disaster is because
the western world has generally moved to a just-in-time system of doing
pretty much everything, where everything is run at exactly capacity with
absolutely no margin for error - intentionally, to cut costs to the bare
minimum.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"