Happy Birthday to the Clean Air Act -- 40 Years Young!
Posted December 31, 2010 in Curbing Pollution, Solving Global Warming
We've been celebrating the Clean Air Act's 40th anniversary a lot this year, but today is the old girl's actual birthday. President Richard M. Nixon signed the 1970 Clean Air Act into law on the last day of that year. In his remarks, he saluted the new law as the achievement of leaders of both parties: "How did this come about? It came about by the President proposing. It came about by a bipartisan effort represented by the Senators and Congressmen, who are here today."
Here's a really good short video from EnergyNOW on the Clean Air Act 40th birthday (with me afterwards in an even shorter panel discussion).
The health, environmental, and economic accomplishments of the Clean Air Act -- tens of thousands of lives saved, hundreds of thousands of illnesses prevented, all while the economy more than doubled in size -- are well catalogued (a few examples are here, here, and here).
But we're not done yet. Air pollution, from the pollutants that cause asthma and cancer to the pollutants that drive global warming, still poses enormous public health and environmental dangers. There is much for the Clean Air Act to do in the coming years.
Yet once again, the law is coming under political attack from big polluters and their defenders. As some recent notable editorials have put it (here, here, and here), it is the time for leaders of both parties to quit the attacks and step up to defend the Clean Air Act. The public, which wants clean air, will reward those who do, and punish those who don't.
So on New Year's Eve, let's raise a glass to the next 40 years of clean air. (Not to worry, the CO2 bubbles in your beverage are OK.)
To the Clean Air Act: 40 years young!
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Comments
Dr. James Singmaster — Jan 1 2011 12:12 PM
As a New Year Resolution for getting clean air and water, we need to resolve to get action on our massive ever-growing messes of organic wastes and sewage before the escapes of germs, toxics and drugs from them become a bigger problem that air pollution. It should be pointed out that the costly mishandling of those wastes via dumps or incineration leads to unneeded reemitting of GHGs that were trapped for us so kindly by nature in biocarbo. Those messes can be a resource via pyrolysis as I have pointed out to NRDC staff and many comments on this blog. We better resolve to get the messes under control soon or they will be overwhelming our descendants' future with dead oceans, polluted drinking water and unsafe foods.
Dr. J. Singmaster
Richard Charter — Jan 1 2011 04:36 PM
Happy Birthday and thanks for reminding us of this important fact. Imagine, forty years, it does not look a day over twenty, actually....
Dale Hemsell — Jan 2 2011 01:07 PM
A message for David Doniger,
Spend your money eliminating CO2 with
diesel off-road trucks in Texas!! The emissions would require your attention.
Thanks from New Braunfels,Texas