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> People said the same thing: we couldn't afford clean water, emissions controls or fuel economy systems for cars, ending use of DDT (and that even years after
by twblalock 5y ago
> People said the same thing: we couldn't afford clean water, emissions controls or fuel economy systems for cars, ending use of DDT (and that even years after its effectiveness had fallen off of a cliff due to selected immunity), power-efficient appliances, replacing incandescent lightbulbs with those using massively less power, etc.
Almost all of the things in that list were solved by technological solutions which replaced things people had with better things and made people better off, not by people sacrificing their quality of life.
- acdha 5y agoAnyone who grew up in the 80s heard a TON of whining about how seatbelts & DUI laws were destroying freedom and having to a less-polluting car burning unleaded fuel was expensive and no fun. Phasing out CFCs, dealing with acid rain, EnergyStar appliances, etc. were all decried as devastating the economy but that didn't happen and very few people want to go back. If you weren't around back then, all of this was portrayed by some people as a massive quality of life sacrifice and most of them were not industry shills. My main point was that very little of this happened in a vacuum: government policy pushed R&D on most of those technologies, pushed people to adopt them, used taxes to compensate for externalities, etc.