Wednesday - May 20, 2009

One By One They All Fall

As the Obama administration considers further steps to fight air pollution, a recent report from a Washington think tank shows that air quality in the United States has improved significantly over the last decade.

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research analyzed data collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and concluded that levels of numerous gases linked with air pollution have fallen off since 2001.

Among the findings: Carbon monoxide decreased by 39 percent, ozone by 6 percent, and sulfur dioxide by 32 percent.

“Pick any category you want and pollution levels are generally lower than they were seven years ago,” said Steven Hayward, the policy analyst who authored the report, titled “Index of Leading Environmental Indicators,” for the conservative think tank.

“(Environmental groups) said air pollution was out of control, but this was always more about politics than it was fact,” Hayward said.

In the rarefied and unpolluted air of the audiophile world, there is a concept called Diminishing Returns. [and everywhere else in life too, but the audio world is really eXtreme, so it makes a great example] A $500 CD player does a much better job of playing your disc than a $20 player. If you have really fine gear, a $2000 CD player sounds better than a $500 player.  But a $5000 player only sounds a little bit better than the $2000 model, and you can only tell the difference if the rest of your stereo is worth ... a bit more than the price of a new car. And CD players are CHEAP compared to audiophile record players!! $250 speaker cables sound a lot better than plain old zipcord wire. $1500 speaker cables sound better than the $250 ones. But the $25,000 wires are only such a slight improvement over the $1500 models that it’s a subjective judgment. And you need a quarter million dollar system in it’s own custom built sonically perfect room to tell the difference.

Yes, in the 60s the air stank. There was litter all over the roads. Love Canal. Dirty rivers that caught on fire. And so on. And yes, there are still some places today that have some industrial smoke and other kinds of smog. But how much is good enough? I think we are already past the point of reasonableness. When will enough ever be enough? Especially since a huge part of the rest of the non-white world doesn’t give a fig about air pollution, water pollution, environmental damage, waste-water treatment, conservation, or any of that stuff. As South Park’s Eric Cartman put it when stepping off the plane in a foreign land, “This whole country smells like ass!”

Posted by Drew458     on 05/20/2009 at 12:09 PM   
Filed Under: • Environment •  
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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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