People care when their drinking water is contaminated with lead. They care if their medicines aren’t safe and effective, or if somebody takes all the money out of their investment accounts. Those things don’t make people happy. Yet it’s administrative agencies that are guarding against that and protecting their rights. So when the Supreme Court starts to dismantle important features of these agencies, it matters because it’s destabilizing a really important part of government
First off, in the world of Ghostbusters, ghosts absolutely are real, though their appearances seem to be somewhat sporadic.
Second, Peck was a man who abused his power and nearly caused an apocalypse.
I’m not saying the Ghostbusters were entirely in the right, but Peck absolutely went too far because of his own personal biases. When he first went to the firehouse to investigate, he started out just fine. When he asked to see the containment unit, Venkman asked a perfectly valid question, “why do you want to see it?” From there, Peck immediately went off on a tangent, accusing the Ghostbusters of being frauds, and threatening legal action, to which Venkman responded in kind.
The next time Peck shows up, he has barged in and shuts everything down without thought of the consequences. Even the people he brings along for support think it’s a bad idea.
It’s like somebody built a bomb in their back yard, and instead of properly defusing it, he insists they take a sledgehammer to it.
Imagine how this goes if he kept his cool in the first meeting. Venkman likely shows him the containment unit, and Spengler explains how it works. If it really does run afoul of EPA regulations, the Ghostbusters get a fine, and are asked to bring their equipment into compliance. Maybe they have to retrofit a few things, but in the end, there’s probably no explosion of ghosts, and possibly Vinz Clortho and Zuul never manage to link up (as their meeting was facilitated by the chaos of the aftermath), preventing Gozer from entering our dimension.