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Air pollution was already being increasingly dealt with by municipal smog laws before the EPA was created.
by CryptoPunk 7y ago
Air pollution was already being increasingly dealt with by municipal smog laws before the EPA was created.
- ncmncm 7y agoIn certain cities. Rivers and groundwater were totally undefended.
- notacoward 7y ago"Increasingly dealt with" only in the sense of having gone from not even having laws on the books to having laws on the books that did nothing. Unfortunately, air and water do not respect human political boundaries. Businesses can move, or threaten to move, either taking advantage of weaker regulation in the new location or keeping them weak in the old one (respectively). We still see these effects across national boundaries, even though both pollutants and jobs are less mobile between nations than they were between states. EPA was created because local efforts had almost completely failed time after time, and would have continued to fail for obvious reasons.