November 25, 2001
From the desk of Jane Galt:Newsflash: Environmental laws have costs,
Newsflash: Environmental laws have costs, just like everything else
This article suggests that the reason the WTC collapsed was that the columns were constructed without asbestos, due to new environmental regulations in effect at the time of construction.
While the article has a "see? Environmental laws are stupid!" tone that makes me wince a little, its facts sound plausible. The more interesting point to me is that I would bet that no one ever heard a public debate on whether it was better to have asbestos columns or the risk of collapse. My guess is that the answer would be "risk of collapse" -- no, don't shoot me, but at the time the building was built a fire fueled by that much avgas was an extremely unlikely (somewhere to the right of six sigma range, I'd guess) event, while asbestosis was a clear and present danger. Just as it is very possible that if we had a public debate about higher fuel efficiency vs. auto safety (increasing the mpg of cars results in a significant increase in auto deaths because they have to make the cars lighter, and therefore unable to sustain as much damage without injury to the occupant) we would come out on the side of fuel efficiency. My problem is that we never do have that debate -- whether because the auto makers are incompetent at PR, or because the media finds it easier to write stories from an "evil big corporation does it again" viewpoint, I do not know.
Posted by Jane Galt at November 25, 2001 10:15 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links