Comment by dpark
10 hours ago
SpaceX is running a bunch of “portable”, high pollution gas generators in Memphis, TN specifically to get around the regulation you’re describing.
Elon definitely got the “you can just do things” memo.
10 hours ago
SpaceX is running a bunch of “portable”, high pollution gas generators in Memphis, TN specifically to get around the regulation you’re describing.
Elon definitely got the “you can just do things” memo.
The proposed regulation they're describing doesn't have that loophole.
It’s what I was thinking of when I said “lots of industrial generators” too, but I couldn’t remember where it was.
Right, that’s what I was thinking of when I wrote my comment. Regulate back. If there is no will to do so, well, that’s a choice. Write the law, pass the law, aggressively enforce civil and criminal penalties for violations. They haul gas generators in without a license? Confiscate and tear them down for scrap (which will be painful, as these turbines are in short supply and their manufacturers are backlogged years into the future), in accordance with law you pass. Hold the utility liable if they provide a fossil gas pipeline connection. Humans like Elon may not care, but utilities have something to lose. Find “one throat to choke” as the saying goes.
It is not politically easy, but it is logistically straightforward.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/one_throat_to_choke
The general problem with this approach is that it's not possible for the legislature to simultaneously be deliberative and fast-acting.
If you pass a nuance-free emphatic rule that says no fossil fuel generators, does that include the backup generators at a hospital? If it does and then the hospital loses power, that's not just a political problem, that's a "people will die" problem. But if it doesn't then you're going to turn around and find that Elon Musk's data center is hosting some hospital's IT system and then running the generators (that happen to also power the rest of the entire facility) to keep it online. Time will pass before this loophole can be detected, more time until new rules can be promulgated, and then they'll find a different loophole and the process begins again.
That process tends to make people frustrated and then they want to abandon the rule of law. Stop having rules that say what you can't do and just have rules that say you can't do anything and then selectively prosecute the people you don't like. The modern system has been evolving to work more like that, but that's how you enable people like Trump. Making the system work like that is a disaster.
What you need to do is find a better way to solve the problem in general, like a carbon tax, rather than trying to play whack a mole with overly-specific rules until there is such a thicket of them that you're really playing "show me the man and I'll show you the crime" -- or setting things up for someone else to.