Oil refineries in particular are interesting because the sources for the blend of gasoline California requires[0] are either in CA itself or are few and far away. This means that gasoline prices are susceptible to greater supply shocks and so on. Many US regulations follow from California exercising its large market to induce companies to change their policies (electronic one-click cancel, CCPA, No Surprises in healthcare billing) but this one hasn't quite had the same effect.
One can hope that most Californians switch to BEVs from ICE vehicles before this becomes more of a constraint.
Gasoline usage externalities are poorly priced-in so the resulting increase in cost of gasoline here is probably overall a good thing. If we had appropriate carbon/sulphur/etc pricing on the outputs, I think it would be less justifiable since then the externalities would be priced in.
Paint VOCs sounds fine, until it's done at industrial scale, and it's also your neighbor, and also all the children in the neighborhood have asthma, and also healthcare is a lot more expensive...
This list isn't things you "cant do in california" but "polluting things you can't do in highly populated cities".
I'm not sure what the conclusion here is other than health is not important.
Most of this stuff could be done in compliance with the laws but it’s just cheaper to do it somewhere else where you allowed to vent poison in the air rather than having to filter it out.
Are they only banned in the cities, or are they banned in the state, which -- even in California, should have rural areas far enough away from cities to be tenable?
It's an interesting conundrum though, because in many cases, the cities could not exist without the things that are being banned in the cities. It's a curious goal of populations to centralize, then ostracize all the things that enabled that centralization
Everywhere in California that isn't a giant population center is growing food for the rest of the country, or is a mountain where these things can't be built anyway.
They're probably "not banned" only in the "basically lying" sense that they per rule won't approve you in certain cities and if you do happen to be rural the process is hostile and expensive enough that it's not worth it for the value such a facility would generate. That's how that sort of stuff is in my state.
I do not care to try to make things ethically fair for oil refineries. Call me a hypocrite, I do not care, as these companies similarly do not care. "Ya got me!", yup, moving on, I am still glad oil refineries are effectively banned.
My point wasn't about fairness towards oil refinery companies, it was that supporting a ban on refineries in your local area while still benefiting from the downstream outputs of oil refineries is hypocritical nimbyism.
If oil refineries are bad in California, they're bad everywhere, and if they're bad everywhere, we ought to stop using them altogether, which will make for some unwelcome lifestyle changes.
I think if we consolidate those operations the better, and then we can improve an regulate legislative or as a market more easily than if everyone is spread all over.
If we consolidate them you wind up with the same situation we have for everything already. The big megacorps who's paid for experts and lawyers (and ability to donate to politics) to tell you why the river glowing is safe get to do what they want and the upstart who may challenge that bigCo to do better never gets off the ground. But I guess if the goal is simply to declare everything "fixed" because the government has agreed it's compliant then consolidation is fine.
Oil refineries in particular are interesting because the sources for the blend of gasoline California requires[0] are either in CA itself or are few and far away. This means that gasoline prices are susceptible to greater supply shocks and so on. Many US regulations follow from California exercising its large market to induce companies to change their policies (electronic one-click cancel, CCPA, No Surprises in healthcare billing) but this one hasn't quite had the same effect.
One can hope that most Californians switch to BEVs from ICE vehicles before this becomes more of a constraint.
Gasoline usage externalities are poorly priced-in so the resulting increase in cost of gasoline here is probably overall a good thing. If we had appropriate carbon/sulphur/etc pricing on the outputs, I think it would be less justifiable since then the externalities would be priced in.
0: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65184
They are wrong about paint shops.or at least the reason.
They are all using voc compliant paints these days, even outside California.
I have no idea how hard permitting is mind you, but the claimed thing here is that they can't be voc compliant and that's just totally wrong.
Paint VOCs sounds fine, until it's done at industrial scale, and it's also your neighbor, and also all the children in the neighborhood have asthma, and also healthcare is a lot more expensive...
This list isn't things you "cant do in california" but "polluting things you can't do in highly populated cities".
I'm not sure what the conclusion here is other than health is not important.
Most of this stuff could be done in compliance with the laws but it’s just cheaper to do it somewhere else where you allowed to vent poison in the air rather than having to filter it out.
This place you speak of doesn't exist.
First, manufacturers don't really make non voc compliant auto paints. The market is too small. They may make 550 and 275 variants but most don't.
Second, even like Texas has voc regulations on paints and also requires filtering and enclosed spray booths and gun cleaners and ....
And like I said, nobody is selling non compliant coatings because the market is zero.
Are they only banned in the cities, or are they banned in the state, which -- even in California, should have rural areas far enough away from cities to be tenable?
It's an interesting conundrum though, because in many cases, the cities could not exist without the things that are being banned in the cities. It's a curious goal of populations to centralize, then ostracize all the things that enabled that centralization
Everywhere in California that isn't a giant population center is growing food for the rest of the country, or is a mountain where these things can't be built anyway.
They're probably "not banned" only in the "basically lying" sense that they per rule won't approve you in certain cities and if you do happen to be rural the process is hostile and expensive enough that it's not worth it for the value such a facility would generate. That's how that sort of stuff is in my state.
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Are you okay with not using products that have an oil refinery in their supply chain?
I do not care to try to make things ethically fair for oil refineries. Call me a hypocrite, I do not care, as these companies similarly do not care. "Ya got me!", yup, moving on, I am still glad oil refineries are effectively banned.
My point wasn't about fairness towards oil refinery companies, it was that supporting a ban on refineries in your local area while still benefiting from the downstream outputs of oil refineries is hypocritical nimbyism.
If oil refineries are bad in California, they're bad everywhere, and if they're bad everywhere, we ought to stop using them altogether, which will make for some unwelcome lifestyle changes.
8 replies →
I think if we consolidate those operations the better, and then we can improve an regulate legislative or as a market more easily than if everyone is spread all over.
If we consolidate them you wind up with the same situation we have for everything already. The big megacorps who's paid for experts and lawyers (and ability to donate to politics) to tell you why the river glowing is safe get to do what they want and the upstart who may challenge that bigCo to do better never gets off the ground. But I guess if the goal is simply to declare everything "fixed" because the government has agreed it's compliant then consolidation is fine.
Yeah I agree. Since Russia is mostly empty and they have a lot of oil, let's put all refineries there! (/s)
This is to show that there is more geopolitically than meets the eye.