Comment by jmward01
7 hours ago
Points taken. After seeing this and other similar posts I suspect my thought experiment would fail and the areas would be highly polluted. Maybe instead we need pollution parks? The big point is we need some sort of constant reminder of how bad things were and could be again if we don't keep our guard up. We are victims of our success. People look around and see reasonable water and breath reasonable air and get mad when you tell them 'rolling coal' exhaust systems should be a felony that puts you in jail for a year in addition to a fine. Basically, what will get people to listen and remember?
> People look around and see reasonable water and breath reasonable air
In Louisiana after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, people could literally see crude oil washing up on the same shores where they went out to catch redfish and bring it home for dinner.
And yet those same people voted for the exact same politicians that enabled that stuff to happen.
It's not a simple visibility problem. It's a complex cultural issue that relates to the interests of the elites, communication systems, religion, etc.
I agree the problem has more than one aspect, but we made real progress that we are now backtracking on nationally. Local problems will always be local. Go to a <insert industrial town here> town and they will likely be pro that industry but as a nation we recognized local pollution didn't stay local and created things like the EPA and implemented regulations that worked. Now we are backtracking because, I think, people haven't felt the problems themselves. I remember burning eyes and amazing sunsets, others don't. How can we get those that never experienced inoculated so they will keep the regulations that made things better?
Man, I honestly don't know.
A big part of why I left Louisiana is because the culture there is so deeply broken that the best solution I could come up with is to escape.