EPA lets corporations report their own pollution and other news

Feel the News

Feel the News and Friends, the comedy news hour is tonight at 5pm ET. We’ll be talking about the news in today's newsletter. Register here to get a reminder. Now let’s talk about news that made sad, angry, and glad. 

News that made me sad

Guess who is reporting how much pollution corporations emit into the air? Corporations are! If you just panicked, we are kindred spirits. This is the equivalent of letting the cookie monster self-report how many cookies he eats. The EPA doesn’t just let corporations report their own toxic emissions, it doesn’t even require the reporting to be accurate. Sorry I keep dropping more bad news, but corporations can estimate how much they are polluting using calculations that are no longer relevant. I wish my teachers would have let me estimate what I thought my grade was. Schools are much more restrictive with students’ performance than the EPA is with ensuring we don’t breathe in toxins.

The sweetest part of this deal is that corporations are allowed to go back and edit all the data they report to the Toxic Release Inventory. So let's say the EPA releases information that a toxin is more dangerous than was previously thought, corporations can just go into their records and make that toxin disappear. Which they’ve done. I don’t think I would have the nerve to change my grade to meet some standard, but again teenage me did not run the school.

This news makes me sad because this is yet again another example of the government letting corporations get away with turning our planet into a murderous science fair project. 

News that made me angry 

After a Starbucks in Buffalo, New York voted to unionize, making it the first unionized Starbucks, the company is ramping up it’s union busting efforts. I guess when Starbucks refers to workers as partners, it means more of a Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner partnership and less  macaroni and cheese. Macaroni and vegan cheese of course know that they need each other, and so they come together to create a delicious side. Wile E. Coyote’s only reason for existence is to exploit Road Runner, so he is constantly trying to come up with different ways to catch Road Runner.