Subject: Re: If RFK gets confirmed ,
You can have the cheapest or you can have it made in america for a higher price. You can export the industrial pollution or you can inflict it on our local air/water/land. OR you can have a powerful EPA work hard to make sure it's done cleanly and safely.

Isn't this populist whiplash precisely why it should not be a political decision?

Not really. The whole point of democracy is to allow decisions to be made by representatives elected by the governed. Even if the governed might change their mind about what they want. Those are all choices that, under a democratic system, are within the proper sphere of the political bodies.

There's no "right" answer to these questions. For example, should we have high tariffs on Chinese EV's? There are pros and cons, benefits and costs - and different groups reap the benefits than bear the costs. This is not something that can get resolved by experts. Experts can tell you what the likely impacts will be, which groups will benefit and which will be harmed, what the potential non-economic impacts might be, etc. - but they can't tell you what ought to be done, because "ought" questions involve values and balancing competing interests rather than factual evaluations.

With climate change and COVID, Democrats really leaned hard into the idea that where the scientists had spoken, public policy choices had to follow certain paths. And a fair number of people got really upset that there wasn't a discussion about whether and how those types of decisions should be made. In a democracy, most choices are ultimately made by "the people" - and even though "the people" might make short-sighted choices or selfish choices or even 'bad' choices, we still reserve those choices to be made by "the people" through specific political processes.