Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency finalized new regulations governing emissions from gasoline-powered lawn and marine engines (e.g. lawnmowers, weed trimmers, motorboat engines, etc.). "EPA's new small engine standards will allow Americans to cut air pollution as well as grass," said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. According to the Washington Post story:
Environmentalists, who noted that one riding lawn mower emits as much pollution in an hour as 34 cars, said the move would protect the environment and promote energy efficiency. Because spark-ignition engines release as much as 25 percent of their gas unburned in their exhaust, the EPA also estimates that the regulations, when fully implemented, will lead to a more efficient combustion process that will save about 190 million gallons of gasoline each year.
It seems that much of industry is willing to accept the rules, so they might not face a court challenge. If so, that would be good news for the EPA, which has not had much luck defending Clean Air Act regulations under the Bush Administration.
Now I have something to tell my wife when college football is on the tube. "Honey, I'm just not sure I should be cutting the grass at this time. Think of the polar bears."
Or about 1.5 gallons of gas per year for each person in the US.
Same benefit as if a family of 4 would drive 150 miles less per year (6 gal x 25 MPG).
Big flipping deal.
Yeah, that will end our dependence on foriegn oil and obviate the need for more drilling.
Just think of all the polar bears you could save by sweating for hours on a Saturday.
Bebo - standing back behind the bullet proof glass and dodging the hangernades that will now be tossed from this site.
If every thing you do affects others in some way, then by your theory, how dare anyone claim a right to live as they please, instead of how others would arrange for them. Yes, that is the liberal vision of humanity in a nutshell.
Please do not rattle your chains in public. It's unseemly.
Looks like those days are over.
bravo. And I might add that Bebo harmed my brain with his (her? will go with male 'cause its Friday but don't read anything into it) reasoning, so we can be fairly certain that he is a hypocrite since he polluted my air by using a computer to post it.
BTW does anyone know what a hangernade is?nevermind, I usually don't pick on spelling errors and now I realize it was hand grenade, just was reading it as some variation of hanger, as in hook or coat hanger, and couldn't for the life of me figure out what a hangernade was.Frankly, you've got to be an idiot to believe that the free market will take care of the environment. There is a huge body of evidence to the contrary.
Great. Bebo calles on the government to use force, and then hides in his bullet-proof box.
Like the rest of us have one of those . . .
You missed "also" in the article. Now, return to issue of how much AIR pollution those 190 000 000 gallons a year produce. You don't mind that pollution until landscaper shows up on your lawn next door and spews fumes right into you bedroom.
Remember, now you can manufacture whatever you can sell. Equipment does not count like cars.
I hope you won't mind if the government comes to lock you up because you HARMED OTHERS!
incandescent light bulbs = harming others, government is required to step in and act to save us from ourselves.
high flow toilets = harming others, government is required to step in and act to save us from ourselves.
Low mileage big trucks and SUVs = harming others, government is required to step in and act to save us from ourselves.
abortion/killing unborn human life (or born human life, for Obamacidal maniacs) = not harming others. government has no say. kill away so as not to be punished with a child.
Moving to the specifics, air quality is a classic justification for government action that passes this newer libertarian test. When you pollute the air, you cause injury that is virtually untraceable -- even less traceable than the migratory birds from my earlier example. Private damages actions are worthless to prevent small-scale pollution like this.
Further into the specifics, one-cylinder and two-stroke engines like the ones mentioned in this article are unbelievably dirty. IMHO, the EPA hasn't even gone far enough. My only libertarian quibble is that I wouldn't ban these engines; instead, I would tax them severely. Where there is an externality, build that externality into the price via a tax (or call it whatever you'd like), then let the market equilibrate.
To be a good libertarian, you need to be a passable economist and historian. Theory is nice, but historically, we know what happens without environmental laws that build environmental externalities into free market prices. Yes, free markets are better for the environment than socialist markets, even when free markets do not have environmental laws, but they aren't good enough. Smart, libertarian, incentives-savvy, market-respecting environmental laws are possible, and very wise. The key is to leave markets intact, and have an "enforcement" rather than a "regulatory" mindset.
And The General, who is killing born human life? That sounds pretty scary to me.
Wow. Utterly nonsenscial. This is the lie - trying to show people how important it is by quoting a "big" number.
Saving 190 MMgal/gas a year is a drop in the bucket. If every four people drive a total of 3 miles less per week it would come to the same savings.
And, FWIW, the amount of "pollution" as measured in CO2 is independent of how you burn it - in a car, in a lawn mower, or in a puddle in the street.
I thought we were supposed to do a cost/benefit analysis when making policies. It seems someone missed this big time.
And as for your concerns re: the landscaper, close the windows while he's there.
So considering the past several decades that means that what, billions of gallons of gasoline are floating around in the air? So we ought to be able to set up some air scrubbers and just start taking that gas back out of the air right?
Don't be silly, it just gets mixed into the fuel-air mixture of your car allowing you to run on a leaner (less gasoline) mixture. No need to set up scrubbers for it.
N.B. To eliminate the tragedy of leaf blower noise, let's enact legislation prohibiting illegal aliens from operating small engines.
Yeah, right. This is why I love it when lawyers talk about something they know nothing about.
What happens is that the volatile organic components (VOCs) react with sunlight to form lower chain hydrocarbons and ozone - these are a major component of smog (when combined with particulates int he air). Complete combustion converts all of the fuel into CO2. A byproduct of combustion - (nitrogen oxides - NOx) form due to a high temperatures reaction with the O2 and N2 in air.
So you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. To get the most energy from the fuel you need the high temperatures - giving you more NOx. If you have incomplete combustion, you get more smog.
Like sarcasm?
Lawyers get all bent out of shape when a non-lawyer offers an opinion. When a lawyer offers an opinion that is based on nonsense and is called on it, they always try to deflect the blame for their ignorance esewhere.
Try to learn something new. I hope you can.
I'm going to break down this miscommunication, because I think it applies to some of the flood of political comments in recent days on this site. I hope it's not too far off point.
incongruities made a joke based on a statement from the article taken to absurdity. Then "one of many" responded with sarcasm. Then you responded by implying that lawyers posting on this thread are out of their element (of course, not all of us are lawyers by trade or education), and continuing with what appears to be a dry explanation of how exhaust really behaves in the atmosphere. Though I must admit, my eyes kept glazing over with the chemistry. Then Ryan Waxx responded with a bit of snark to your lawyer crack by indicating that you mistook the sarcastic post by "one of many" to be serious, and you responded to that in an unpleasant manner with your own sarcasm which seems to indicate that you think the posters to whom you've responded are arrogant lawyers (however deserved the reputation) out of their element in discussing lawn mower emissions.
Is that about right?
And I have had the debate with lawyers expressing the need to state their ignorant opinions on scientific fact on other threads - simply because they "feel they have a right to their opinions.
I scoff.
I think somebody needs to start a lawyer joke thread to shake out some of these nervious jigglies left over from the conventions. Magic fuel saver device jokes based on the claim of incomplete combustion just aren't going to cut it.
The downside is that it makes engines far more expensive to make, which makes it easier to fix old mowers instead of buying a new one, which makes hundreds of people here lose their jobs... :(
I strenuously object to the characterization of my post as sarcasm. It might just barely have crossed into snark and did indeed involve irony but in no way rose to being sarcasm. Joke building is not intended to belittle the teller of the original joke, but is instead paying tribute to ingenuity to original concept of the joke and using it to launch another joke.
I did not intend to imply that you were trying to contradict inconguities, just that you kept running with the joke in a different direction. For what it's worth, I appreciated it and laughed. And I thought it manifestly obvious all of our intents (to commiserate and belittle a regulation most of us didn't think politically viable a short many years ago).
Anon, I wasn't seriously offended, I should have thrown a few more cues in to make that clear, perhaps some "nay"s and convoluted rhetoric. Despite how you feel about Jim Lingren's definition of sarcasm I think most people can agree that there has to be some meanness for something to be sarcastic (I forget the etymology but doesn't it come from the Greek "tear to pieces" or something similar?) Oh well, maybe the VC (this whole intertubes thingie) needs a [humour] HTML tag.
Amen to that. Next time you're in east Tennessee, take a detour to Ducktown. I know, you've never heard of it. Go anyway. You will be enlightened.