So no new car paint shops or oil refineries? I'm okay with that.

DannyBee 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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arjie 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

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ryanobjc 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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Gigachad 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	DannyBee 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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bmelton 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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

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WD-42 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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cucumber3732842 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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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ryanobjc 14 hours ago | parent [-]

That's the thing, often when people say stuff like "its banned" what they really mean is:

- the cost of mitigating the human health risk is too high - competitors in low-environmental regulation places don't pay for those costs - ongoing verification is expensive

I mean, let's face it, "self-regulation" of industries isn't really working that great. And for things that are health hazards that are basically borne by someone else, why should a local government make it easy to cheat and lie about this stuff?

The people arguing against this seem to assume that their right to have a business, make a profit, whatever, is a self-evident Good Thing, and rarely provide any additional arguments beyond "but the jobs". If they were at the VERY LEAST saying "we can make X safe" then maybe it'd be interesting. But as it is, the argument is basically asking us to mortgage the health and safety.

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cucumber3732842 3 hours ago | parent [-]

You know what the V in VOC stands for right?

Hint: It doesn't stand for "there forever"

Nobody here wants to just let big business do whatever and turn the rivers weird colors again or go back to smog but it's very clear that the current regulatory system is not suitable and is hurting us.

It boggles the mind that someone could honestly (by which I mean dishonestly and malice are far simpler explanations) step into this conversation and be like "no, this is all fine and well, god forbid someone start spraying cars in a shop in the desert without jumping through all most of the same expensive hoops that make it not worth it down town (and would make it doubly not worth it out in the desert).

And it's not just autobody work. There's all manner of necessary economic activity that's being kept out or made artificially expensive in this manner.

	▲	inigyou 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The V in VOC stands for "evaporates at room temperature" which means that if you use it, people breathe it in.

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akoboldfrying 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Are you okay with not using products that have an oil refinery in their supply chain?

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wewtyflakes 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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akoboldfrying 11 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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inigyou 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Would it be hypocritical nimbyism if I wanted to use semiconductors containing arsenic, but didn't want my living room to be an arsenic warehouse? Or how far away does the arsenic warehouse have to be before it starts being hypocritical nimbyism for me to not like it there?

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wewtyflakes 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm fine if other states want to ban them too. I'm also fine if ultimately running oil refineries is uneconomical. I do not care if this is nimbyism; other communities are free to set their own rules.

	▲	akoboldfrying 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So you're okay with no refineries after all. So, no combustion-based private or public transportation, no detergents, no aspirin, paracetamol or ibuprofen. It would still be possible to drive an EV, though. You could keep it lubricated with whale oil.

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testbjjl 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

	▲	cucumber3732842 14 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		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.
	▲	trklausss 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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.