Beijing!
Gesundheit!
In 1980 I began my machinist’s apprenticeship at Inland Steel. I worked in the Coke Plant. While I was working there, the EPA was continually trying to shut the Coke Plant down.
You see, Inland was spending millions to try to comply with emissions standards, and they weren’t able to comply, yet.
Oh, they were making headway- from the time I started, to the time i quit, there was a HUGE change in emissions. To a point where we were no longer required to wear dust masks in areas where they had been mandatory before, etc.
Inland projected they’d meet EPA emissions standards in ten years, the EPA required four, and they eventually managed to shut them down. Took a while, but other metallurgical grade coke processes eventually came on line, and have taken up the load, but the damage to the steel industry in North America was extensive.
Now, once closed, the metallurgical-grade coke facilities in the US started to be scrapped out. And the scrap was put on ships. And those ships took it to China. I saw this with my own eyes.
China took that scrap, and you know what they did with it? they reassembled it into their own metallurgical-grade coke facilitiies.
All except the emissions shit. They melted that shit down and sold the steel.
The chinese had no intention of paying any attention to environmental restrictions. here’s a plant that was at Inland and ended up in China.
No fume hoods, no exhaust stacks with air scrubbers, no electrostatic discharge cleaning towers, no enclosed guide cars, just open coke ovens venting their pollutant to atmosphere. Not even a respirator for the poor bastard who has to stand there and work on it. Just nothing.
SO the EPA is directly responsible for the crappy air quality in Beijing, and don’t you forget it.
19 comments Og | Uncategorized
Makes me kind of proud,you know?
Excellent! Environmentalists Killing Teh Environment! Greenies Gagging on Greenwaste! So much alliteration, so little time.
You should try breathing in Beijing. I was there from January to July of this year. The sunlight was strong enough for me to cast a shadow in late May and I saw clouds one day in June. The rest of the time it looked like the LA basin in the ’70’s/
Great info. I will of course link this and send it out over the internet waves to every lib I can find who might read it. Probably won’t change much, but I bet it pisses them off and that is worth the effort. :)
[…] August 6, 2008 in Uncategorized Wrote this. Here’s his sight. http://neanderpundit.com/?p=2450 […]
I’ve heard that China has bought up all of our scrap steel. Do you know what happened the last time we sold all of our scrap to an emerging Asian power?
Yeah Slash, they sent it right back to us. In a slightly modified form. The first finished steel delivery was made on the 7th of December, 1941. Via air freight.
Og, you say you started in 1980. Did the EPA shut them down during the Reagan administration?
I believe it was bush 1
Sorry, Ted, I found the cite: 1995.
I disagree. The EPA is directly responsible, through ineptitude and high-handedness, for the destruction of the US steel industry. Even more than buying foreign oil, loss of steel capacity is a serious and direct threat to our national security.
The Chinese are the ones that choose to eliminate pollution controls. Yes, they picked up the plants. The plant owner could have chosen to install effective controls and protections. The EPA is not a UN effort, is not an internationally recognized ‘humanitarian’ effort endorsed by all. The Chinese are to blame for generating pollutants.
But Brad, if the EPA hadn’t forced Inland to shut down its coking operation, the plant wouldn’t have been sold to the Chinese, who wouldn’t be running it today.
There’s a direct line of causality running through this and it points back to the EPA.
exactly, Nathan.
Excellent post! Thank you for pointing this out.
Unintended consequences. Hey, that would make a good book title. Oh.
You do, however, make a very good point.
Yep, But if i wear a hat hardly anyone notices.
Hey! The EPA does a GREAT JOB! Why just today it held forth that ENERGY is more important than FOOD! With the “mandate” that 9 billion gallons of ethanol be made this year, more than one TRILLION pounds of corn will be used in the distilling process. Enough FOOD to feed the ENTIRE WORLD for a year. But of course the EPA’s “mandate” is to appease greenies and to hell with logic. Especially since ethanol does not PRODUCE A SINGLE GALLON OF EXTRA ENERGY! It takes as much or more energy to produce ethanol as is recovered.
I wonder if any of the left-wing-idiots green-sucking at the epa will ever figure out that if you cause a 10% loss in gas-mileage in a vehicle by forcing a 10% ethynol mix into the gas tank, the owner of that vehicle will end up USING 10% more gasoline?
emdfl, the laws of thermodynamics have no meaning in the liberal viewpoint. Natural laws must bend to make way for the new paradigm.