U.S. Urban Air Pollution Trends: Fossil Fuel Ecology
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 11, 2024
“Between 1970 and 2022, the combined emissions of the six common pollutants (PM2.5 and PM10, SO2, NOx, VOCs, CO and Pb) dropped by 78 percent. This progress occurred while U.S. economic indicators remain strong.” (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Our Nation’s Air Quality: Trends through 2022“)
Having failed to convince skeptics of climate alarm (the science is more settled toward the positives than the negatives of carbon dioxide [CO2]), and with no change in climate policy able to affect climate for decades (if ever), critics of fossil fuels turn to the known criteria air pollutants. The common refrain is that such emissions kill (five million annually), as if the sources of those emissions do not save lives—many more lives—by the minute of every day.
But the trend of each of the five criteria pollutants associated with consumer-driven, taxpayer-neutral energies is positive. And more improvement is predicted. The increasing sustainability of fossil fuels is a major theme of political economy, as it has been for decades. Fact: oil, natural gas, and coal are now environmental products, unlike a half century or more ago when air pollutants from mobile and stationary sources were largely uncontrolled.
https://www.masterresource.org/sustainable-development/increasing-sustainability-us-urban-air-pollution/
