Picture this: You've spent years building a career protecting the innocent from corporate polluters who inflict cancer on defenseless people just to make a buck. You're passionate about your job. Maybe you even have a personal story that explains your dedication to environmental protection, and perhaps have some awards from the EPA for other big polluters you've held accountable. Then you hear about some guys who've stashed a nuclear reactor in an abandoned firehouse in Upper Manhattan without so much as talking to the NRC, let alone getting the required permits. Naturally you're a little bit pissed off, and anxious to find out whether these bozos aren't spewing carcinogenic toxins into the ghetto by the bushel.
When you find out that said bozos are claiming to be supernatural exterminators who eliminate ghosts, you're more than a little concerned by this. After all, you know for a fact that nuclear materials cause cancer, but you sure as hell haven't seen any spectral apparitions - just lots, and lots of graves of people killed by polluters. So you're a little incensed here. You pay a visit to these guys and are a little bit brusque, since you've been accustomed to dealing with corrupt sleazeballs who don't care about the consequences of their actions. And what do you find? This guy:
A contemptuous dickbag with an emotional age of 15 who was kicked out of Columbia University, and who thinks you are silly for (a)doubting their claims about ghosts, and (b)being concerned about the PROVEN FACT that nuclear materials cause cancer. But you're reasonable - you ask to see the storage facility to make sure that it conforms to established standards of radioactive containment, so that you can at least assuage your own conscience that people are not being poisoned with every passing moment that you dick around with this idiot. DENIED. He would rather play games, even though people's lives are at stake.
So you get a court order to guarantee your right to inspect the facility. Then this guy, who was also kicked out of Columbia for wasting university resources on nonsensical pseudoscience, tries to stop you:
He insists that if you interfere with their system in any way, the results will be catastrophic. You, who presumably have some kind of degree in an environmental engineering field, naturally think they're full of shit, and think more than likely that turning off the power to their system will save lives. That's how it's always been before today. But then this happens:
Now, you have two choices: You can believe their claims that this really was a system to contain ghosts, or you can believe that they rigged it with some kind of boobytrap to blow up when you shut it down. You've been dealing with homicidal sociopaths your whole career who wouldn't think twice about dosing 6-year-olds with strontium-90 to increase their stock value 0.01%, so which do you consider more likely?
Craziness is unleashed all over Manhattan following this explosion, and the subjects of your investigation - who it should be noted have been totally uncooperative throughout - declare that this proves them right, and it's you who's crazy, and all your experience means absolutely nothing. They show up at the Mayor's office asking to be let loose to run wild on the city with their nuclear backpacks to clean up the mess you're rationally certain they're responsible for, and when you talk sense to the Mayor, the sarcastic guy who was thrown out of Columbia, stalked an orchestra cellist, and arrested for blowing up a firehouse, casts aspersions on your penis. This somehow persuades the Mayor, and he has you thrown out of his office. Yeah, that's fucking insane.
Let's be clear here: They set up a system that would unleash Armageddon if it lost power for even a few seconds - that's criminally negligent to say the least, even if they're correct that there are ghosts. Suggested denouement to make up for the maltreatment of Walter Peck: He is convinced of the correctness of the Ghostbusters' positions, and crafts sensible environmental protection regulations for supernatural containment, so that ghosts can be kept under control without people being given cancer.