Paul: Pollution a local issue

Ron Paul talks environment and energy in New Hampshire.

SeacoastOnline reports,

“Timberland is an outdoor company, that’s why we have these big sweaters on,” said Jim Davey, vice president of Global Marketing at Timberland. “So the outdoors is important to us and we think it is important to future generations.

“It’s also important to our bottom line,” Davey said. “You talk about getting rid of the Environmental Protection Agency and getting rid of some of the restrictions on coal and oil. Should the U.S. be leading the world in terms of protecting the environment and is that possible under a pure free market economy where there is very little regulation?”

Paul said “big business” and “big government” colluded during the Industrial Revolution and that permitted the pollution of rivers, streams and air, and trampled private property rights.

“There are collective things you need to think about, with how you handle it when your neighbor is polluting your air,” Paul said. “If there is local pollution and you are living around a lake, it should be pretty easy to see who is polluting the lake. They should be held responsible and liable for that. When you have interstate and international problems, the government should be involved if there’s pollution of air.”

Paul said he was raised in Pittsburgh and when he was growing up it was very polluted, but, he said, it was cleaned up before the EPA through local control…

One Timberland employee asked about the Straits of Hormuz and the recent threat from Iran to close the shipping lane in response to the buildup of western naval forces in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. One-fifth of the world’s oil supply comes through that strait.

“There’s not one chance in 10,000 that they will arbitrarily close that strait, that’s how they sell oil,” Paul said. “There is a lot of stuff going on over there that is exactly what led up to the war in Iraq… it was war propaganda. In Israel the other day, the head of Mossad (Israeli Intelligence Agency) said that if they did get weapons, it is not an existential threat to Israel and they would advise against military operation. All we need to do is back off a little bit… I advocate not overreacting. We have 12,000 diplomats, so let’s use them once in a while.”