It is 2010, 40 years since the first Earth Day (the anniversary is coming up on April 22) and 40 years since the Clean Air Act Extension of 1970 was signed into law. And lots of good has happened since then, in terms of air pollution. On Tuesday, Mark J. Perry of the conservative American Enterprise Institute was touting a chart from the EPA on the think tank’s blog that showed massive drops in air pollutants since 1980–lead down 92 percent, carbon monoxide down 79 percent, and sulfur dioxide and nitrous dioxide down 71 and 46 percent, respectively.
Does Perry find this drop in pollution to be a victory for environmental regulation? Hardly. “Here we are 40 years following the first Earth Day, and none of the dire predictions above about environmental disaster has come true,” Perry writes, referencing predictions of doom by environmentalists from nearly a half a century ago regarding unchecked pollution. But, as Matthew Yglesias, a blogger at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, points out, those predictions were probably wrong because we regulated pollution (which was probably the point of the predictions anyway).
“In the real world, what happened is that we passed environmental laws, and conservatives argued that they would destroy the economy,” Yglesias wrote. “And yet here’s the economy, undestroyed. And here’s the environment, cleaned up.”
Does Perry find this drop in pollution to be a victory for environmental regulation? Hardly. “Here we are 40 years following the first Earth Day, and none of the dire predictions above about environmental disaster has come true,” Perry writes, referencing predictions of doom by environmentalists from nearly a half a century ago regarding unchecked pollution. But, as Matthew Yglesias, a blogger at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, points out, those predictions were probably wrong because we regulated pollution (which was probably the point of the predictions anyway).
“In the real world, what happened is that we passed environmental laws, and conservatives argued that they would destroy the economy,” Yglesias wrote. “And yet here’s the economy, undestroyed. And here’s the environment, cleaned up.”
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