Comments by "Kim O\x27Brien" (@kimobrien.) on "Great Moments in Unintended Consequences: Bird Nets, CA Prop 65, u0026 Carbon Credit Loophole (Vol. 12)" video.

@FifthConcerto The Chineses had campaign against sparrows to increase the grain harvest where the peasants killed them by chasing them into the air the result was a terrible famine caused by locust swarms that normally would have normally been eaten by sparrows.
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@dancing4bears When I grew up you knew enough not to eat lead but we used it without giving it a thought not just in gasoline but fishing sinkers, paint, electronics solder, car batteries and pipe solder. Older homes and cities still have lead pipes and copper pipes soldered with 50/50 leal/tin. The whole water scandal in Flint, MI involved water not properly treated flowing in lead pipes. After all you burned gasoline you didn't eat it like cheerios. When it was initial put in gasoline it was as compound of lead and like I said people were initially lied to about its safety by the oil bosses. It wasn't a "consumer choice." It was quite believable as a lie because after all sodium and chlorine are in table salt which actually a necessary for life yet both atomic chlorine and sodium are highly corrosive and dangerous to both the skin and lung tissue.
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@dancing4bears First the producers of leaded gasoline lied about its safety. If it had NOT been rushed into the market than alternatives would have been used and while the automobile industry may not have developed as quickly we lived for 1,000's of years without automobiles. An estimated 100 million people died early deaths due to leaded gasoline. Just because someone can buy something or puts a label on it does mean it should be built, sold or used in the first place. Leaded gasoline was taken out of the marketplace because it was poisoning the air that all of life depends on.
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@StageWatcher We've shot ourselves in the foot before with DDT and leaded gasoline so I'd rather know more than less.
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@dancing4bears The numbers don't really mean anything besides that it affected huge numbers of people who lived in cities where leaded gasoline was burned as a motor fuel. You'd have to ask a medical scientist and statistician to explain the actual impact. Its is generally thought that any exposure to lead has a negative impact on human and biological health. So in general the practice has been to try to contain and limit its use. Lead car batteries are recycled, and no leaded gasoline except in Aviation fuel.
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@jjkrayenhagen It never fails where they decided to get rid of something and then some economist comes in with supply and demand curves to prove how incentives can solve the problem. The libertarians just want a private tyranny which they pretty much have in the US today. The two parties are funded by corp donors whose K street lobbyist write the only bills that get passed. No one except the lobbyist knows what's in the bills because thing like tax cuts and deductions are cryptically written by describing help needed for specified industries in specified locations so even if you read the bill you would need to find out what firm was making that product in the area. They military is told what it needs to buy and what to pay for it just as the drug companies tell medicare how much to pay for drugs. Business doesn't want to pay any taxes and so everything is being funded by debt except even that is becoming unsustainable and everyone knows it but either ignores it or crys for cut to Social Security.
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