alt Hacker News> If someone wants to build a factory that can't operate without illegal emissions, then so be it. It's their money lost. All that matters is that they don't actually pollute.
That's hopelessly naïve.
If you let them build the facility that can pollute, they're going to pollute.
And if you point to the pollution coming out and tell them "you have to stop," they're going to say "make us."
And if you point to the pollution already in the environment and tell them "you have to clean that up, because you put it there," they're going to say "prove it."
And they're going to tie the government up in court for years or decades, and then oh, whoops, somehow the entity that actually did all the polluting has no more money and can't do anything about it :-( Good thing they were only a subsidiary that all the profit and assets can be moved out of!
And the people who actually live there are suffering from preventable diseases and dying of cancer at rates 5x the national average.
How do I know all this? Because this has been industry's playbook for over a century.
First of all I disagree that it's difficult to get injunctions to stop an activity that was illegal from the start. In fact, sometimes environmental reviews can backfire because they typically require affirmation by the government, which can create a defense to doing something that would otherwise be judged illegal. That type of loophole is why people are so cynical.
But even so, how does the song & dance prevent any of that? It's not like, e.g., a battery manufacturer submits a plan admitting that they're gonna dump stuff.