(Reuters) - American farmers have been ridiculing a proposal by U.S. regulators to reduce the amount of dust floating in rural air.
"If there's ever been rural America, that's what rural America is," said Nebraska hog farmer Danny Kluthe. "You know? It's dirt out here, and with dirt you've got dust."
The Environmental Protection Agency is looking to tighten standards for the amount of harmful particles in the air, facing opposition from U.S. farming groups who call it an unrealistic attempt to regulate dust.
via www.reuters.com
A commenter on this article at the Reuters site defends EPA's proposed tightened standards, which could reduce permissible dust emissions from the present standard of 150 migrograms per cubic meter to 65-85 micrograms per cubic meter, by noting that the EPA revisions are realistic because California already has an even tighter standard.
Yes, but I'm not sure citing California, whose economy is down the drain, is a very smart example of government policy for the country to follow.
The horrible tdeaerigs in Japan should be responded to by every nation on Earth which has the expertise and resources to do so. The fact is, no place on Earth is immune to natural disasters of that magnitude or greater. Americans must band together to make sure that greedy dirty energy companies can't keep us vulnerable to added threats to our lives and health in order to maximize their windfall profits.The nuclear emergencies and natural gas and oil fires in Japan should be an object lesson, and dire warning, to every nation. This is why it is of utmost urgency to convert the world's energy systems to TRULY clean, safe, abundant, inexhaustible and FREE energy sources, such as Wind, Sunshine, Geothermal Heat, Tidal/River Flows and Hydrogen/Oxygen extracted from Water using electricity from those sources.If you think massive conversion to clean energy would be too expensive , I have 2 questions for you:1) In your cost/benefit analysis, how do you value the lives of nuclear plant radiation victims, coal miners, drilling rig workers, billions of sea creatures and the millions of people who die from pollution-caused illnesses?2) If we fail to restore and protect the ONLY known natural life-support system in the Universe, how will you justify that failure to your gasping, wheezing Great-Grandchildren, and what do you think the money saved will be worth to THEM?If Japan's energy came from self-renewing energy sources, there would be no oil and gas fires or nuclear emergencies adding to the other crises they are facing.
Posted by: Mimi | May 03, 2012 at 12:59 AM