Great Moments in Unintended Consequences (Vol. 12)
Nice moments in unintended penalties—when one thing that appears like an ideal thought goes horribly mistaken.
Watch the entire collection.
Half One: Internet Advantages
The 12 months: 2012
The issue: Birds are congregating on the Texas Medical Middle campus and doing…hen issues.
The answer: Connect nets to the big oak timber on campus, forcing birds to take their enterprise elsewhere.
Appears like an ideal thought, with the perfect of intentions. What might probably go mistaken?
Seems, birds eat bugs. With the birds gone, the timber turned a haven for cute furry-looking critters that occur to be North America’s most venomous caterpillar. Contact with these poisonous distress tribbles could cause intense radiating ache, vomiting, fever, convulsions, paralysis, and even loss of life. With nets up and apex predators gone, researchers decided the inhabitants of those comb-over ache retailers elevated by a whopping 7,300 %. Unhealthy information for anybody, however particularly a susceptible inhabitants searching for well being care at, say, oh, I do not know, a medical middle campus.
what they are saying: Flock round and discover out.
Half Two: Prop Comedy
The 12 months: 1986
The issue: toxins in California!
The answer: Proposition 65! A poll initiative that included a provision making it unlawful for companies to “expose people to chemical substances recognized to trigger most cancers or reproductive toxicity with out first giving clear and cheap warning.”
Appears like an ideal thought, with the perfect of intentions. What might probably go mistaken?
When the warning necessities have been established in 1988, 235 chemical substances made the lower. Right this moment there are over 900 compounds on the Proposition 65 record, together with alcoholic drinks, Chinese language-style salted fish, and wooden mud. Even cocaine is on the record, so in case your eight ball would not have a warning label, your seller is breaking the regulation.
With penalties for noncompliance together with fines of as much as $2,500 per violation per day and overzealous litigators in search of their lower, enterprise homeowners got here to the rational conclusion that the price of a label was lower than the price of litigation. The consequence? Warning labels in every single place whatever the severity of threat or diploma of publicity. In bars, eating places, lodges, spas, ski resorts, faculties, and Disneyland. On golf golf equipment, lamps, toasters, children toys, sun shades, potato chips, pancakes, pumpkin puree, and even timber. These indicators have develop into so widespread that one research discovered Californians have realized merely to disregard them.
However, we do not wanna get sued both, so…
Warning: This video accommodates info on Prop. 65, recognized to the state of California to trigger ambiguity between issues which can be harmful and issues which can be innocent. For extra info, go to holycrapthisisreallynotworkingoutthewaywehadplanned.ca.gov
Half Three: Chilly Exhausting Money
The 12 months: 2005
The issue: Greenhouse gases are destroying the planet!
The answer: A system devised by the United Nations (U.N.) Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change rewards firms disposing polluting gasses with carbon credit, which may later be changed into money. The extra dangerous the fuel being disposed, the extra credit are awarded.
Appears like an ideal thought, with the perfect of intentions. What might probably go mistaken?
Hydrofluorocarbon-23 (HFC-23), a producing byproduct of the widespread coolant hydrochlorofluorocarbon-22 (HCFC-22), was seen as notably dangerous, permitting numerous credit when destroyed. So producers—predominantly in India and China—ramped up manufacturing of the coolant, creating extra of the damaging byproduct, which they instantly destroyed. The system netted the producers tens of tens of millions of {dollars} a 12 months. Some producers made twice as a lot from the tax credit score than from gross sales of the particular refrigerant.
Elevated manufacturing of the coolant, itself a contributor to international warming, saved the market worth competitively low, discouraging air con and refrigeration firms from switching to much less dangerous options.
When the U.N. introduced a plan to cease the scheme, Chinese language producers threatened to vent their enormous stockpile of the fuel immediately into the environment—what some activists labeled environmental extortion.
Good local weather you bought there.
Nice moments in unintended penalties: good intentions, unhealthy outcomes.
Have you learnt an ideal second in unintended penalties? Electronic mail us at comedy@motive.com.
Photograph credit score: Carterhawk/Wikimedia; Judy Gallagher/Flickr
